I just finshed a working model of a puzzle which is an extension of the megaminx. It is a truncated icosahedron with 32 sides. I call it a Tuttminx unless somebody knows of prior claim. The core is based on a Zome ball. It turns OK but does have a tendency to get hung up until the alignment is right. I probably should have given a little more clearance on the parts. Oh well.

Anyway it has 182 external pieces, 60 corners, 60 pentagon-hexagon edges, 30 hexagon-hexagon edges, 12 pentagon centers, 20 hexagon centers. The Pentagon are 5 fold symmetric and the hexagons are 3 fold symmetric.

I saw this forum when I was looking around to see if anyone had ever made one and decided to join and see what you think. I am a newbie so go easy.

No, I am not planning to go into production. It was just a self challenge to see if I could do it because I thought it would be neat.

Then let me be the first to say, I am absolutely astounded. Very impressive work.

Can you tell us how large this puzzle is?

When did you start the project? When did you complete it?

What method/material did you use to create this puzzle?

Absolutely awesome.

Wow..!!!
And I thought my 32-side dice was cool enough... how did you do it?

This puzzle is art at its best! Well done!




Peter

Guh? whoa... uh... wow! I'm impressed, dude! Is it fully functional? Seriously... this looks like it could easily be a Fisher design, or designed by the Puzzle Reconstruction Studio over in Japan! Wow... How much to make me one? L8r.

Nice one. Congratulations.

It's pretty funny though... "Tutt" in Swedish pretty much translates to "Tit"

Gee mon!! Thats some puzzle

I suggest you to try to get in to industrial production, you will sell shiploads of these if you do so



I fill in on the Swedish:

Tutte = tit, tuttar = tits
Tutta (eld) = set fire to something

Zome ball?? What is a zome ball?


Can you turn the 32 sides?

Can you post any picture of the internal part? please

Jin H Kim Wrote:
"Can you tell us how large this puzzle is?"
It is about 5 inches from hexagon to hexagon on the opposite side (~13 cm). Each side of a polygon is about 1.1 inches. A little larger than most puzzles, but for my first one I wanted something large enough not to fall apart.

"When did you start the project? When did you complete it?"

I had the idea since ~1991 but did not have the skills till about 2 years ago and actually started building about a year ago.

"What method/material did you use to create this puzzle?"

I was learning a solid modeling program at work and used this as a learning project. I used it to get my understanding of the angles (which are critical) for each piece. I then paid a jeweler to make a master of each unique piece (5) using a stereo lithography machine. From those pieces I made silicone molds and replicated using a two part polyurethane (many many copies). I saw the Zome balls (Zometools.com)as a cheap center and used those to build off of. The pentagon and triangular struts form the proper symmetry. The centers of ech face are screwed and spring loaded similar to a megaminx to give some degrees of freedom. It is fully functional, but does not turn as well as a megaminx . The clearances are not perfect on the inside. It turns similar to a Dogic I have ( you have to make absolutely sure every thing is aligned).

Stereo Lithography is sweet. I really love the whole concept of 3D printing in general. How much did it cost to get each piece made up. As I have had some ideas and stereo lithography sounds like the best way for me to do it. I just figured it was out of my price range. Also what format model did they need?

Extremely impressive!

Congratulations on finding something new and creative to use as a core - I wouldn't have thought of this in a gazillion years. I expect that you're going to inspire some others here to branch out into non-puzzle cores as well.

Definitely a candidate for puzzle-of-the-year.

Ben

It is a little tough to say since it was in with some other parts I wanted to test too. But the the fraction attributable to those parts was not cheap (maybe 300-400 dollars) While he did a great job on his machine if I do more I may try quickparts.com . They have a program you can download to get quotes and with my parts look to be maybe have the price. One tip though, the orientation of the part or parts is important. Most of the cost is associated with the z axis of the part as they build it in layers. So for cheapest put all parts in one file as close together as possible with the thinnest orientation of each part oriented along the z axis. The usual format they want is SLA which most of the solid modeling programs output.

Thanks, that is what I was hoping to stimulate others to do. Some quick tips for other model builders if others do use the zome centers. The plastic struts are not real strong to rotational torque. You can either drill and insert a metal rod (can be used to fix in this way also) or you can coat thick epoxy and imbed the core. Thin superglue does a pretty good job of permanently attaching the struts.

Is this the first twisty ever to be shaped like a C60 molecule? Even if it isn't, it is still lovely.

Congratulations on a fantastic puzzle.
I assume the pentagonal sides can move freely whereas each hexagonal side must always move 120 degrees (2 single 60 degree moves). This would mean that solid colours and checkered colours can never appear together on one side.
BTW Mike, my truncated Dogic is also this shape though far easier to make.

Very impressively constructed. I would opt to toughen up the center core by a judicious application of epoxy or two part urethane slowly built up on the inside. Improving the core's torsional rigidity will also help to improve the puzzle's ease of turning.

Fantastic creation! Please please change your mind and produce some more and sell them . Since I'm a huge Megaminx fan, your puzzle looks just lovely to me.

A "do it yourself kit" would be enough, i.e. the whole thing in pieces, not assembled yet. I prefer buying puzzles in pieces anyway .And maybe Chris from http://www.cubesmith.com could also make nice and easy to apply stickers.

Just in case you do consider this, can you estimate how much it would cost? If it depends on the number of puzzles made, we could surely have a sort of poll counter here.

Or sell it to Rubik or Meffert so they can mass-produce it... though, if that were so easy, we might have many more puzzles available from them already... don't know... man, I'd just so love to have one...

Unbelievable, great job!

Thanks. High praise considering the fantastic puzzles I have seen of yours wandering around this forum.

You are exactly right on all counts. In fact the purpose of checkering was to allow simple distinguishing when they were aligned. As you can imagine the angles are not visually very dissimilar (you can tell if you look carefully though) but they will not turn if a cross hatch is attempted be moved to a uniform color. (It also means fewer colors were needed)

Thank-you, The rigidity actually is not a problem. I was just giving a tip to others since when I first was trying to use the Zome center I accidently broke a couple of struts off twisting them but inserting and glueing a small brass rod cured that, but the epoxy I am sure would work equally well. The turning problem appears more related to internal edge clearance. I should have sanded down a little and rounded a little more to give more of a self -aligning of the internal pieces. It is not bad, you just have to make sure that all the sides are correctly aligned.

let me just say....incredible.

Can you post some more pics of it? some scrambled pics and some size comparison pics? maybe next to a megaminx?

Quinn

Very well done!

One question though - can the hexagons rotate 60 degrees, or are they stuck at multiples of 120 degrees? If they can do 60 degrees, did you figure out some way to make the corners actually 3-fold symmetrical and have the whole thing line up or is it somewhat fudged?

How are these pics?

You will note in the comparison shot one of the pink stickers peeling. I used inkjet printed stickers to get a large range of colors and am not very happy with how easily they unstick. Anybody have any suggestions of sources of good unpatterned stickers with a wide range of colors and the ability to crosshatch or checker?

Stuck at multiples of 120. That is the reason for the cross hatches on the pentagons, to easily see when they correctly aligned. Cross hatches will only move to cross hatches and solids to solids.

excellent pictures!!!! Thanks!!

Regarding stickers, head over to your local sign shop, give them dimentions of your stickers needed, and pick out colors of self-adhesive vinyl, and it shouldn't cost more than 10 bucks for a whole set!

Quinn

Is that an inherent "problem" or could it be overcome? At first I thought 60 degrees turns should be possible, now I'm assuming the pieces are not symmetric because the centers have different sizes and maybe some angles are slightly different. Is that correct? It would be nice to do 60 degrees turns as well, and I'm just wondering whether that's possible at all.

Depends on what you mean by overcome. The pentagon to hexagon angle is inherently different than a hexagon-hexagon angle in a truncated icosahedron so if a part is rotated into the position it is not angularly correct for it would not lie flat. Also remember that the corner angle of a pentagon is different than a hexagon and therefore would not quite look right when in that position. The part that may be "overcome" is putting enough play or slight modification into the internals to allow those turns. Mine does not. I have not really thought too much along those lines since I was trying to stick only to the inherent symmetries in a truncated icosahedron( soccerball, buckyball, etc.)

Why did you use the truncated octahedron instead of the truncated icosahedron? That one is a very similar puzzle, but much less work to build, sort of like the rubiks cube/megaminx relationship.

In the same vein as the truncated octahedron, the truncated tetrahedron can be made into a similar puzzle, although the angles involved are a bit more challenging. It probably makes sense to truncate a bit deeper than on a true truncated tetrahedron, to make the distance from the face centers to the center of the whole thing about even. That modification also makes the 120 degree limitation a lot more obvious, on top of the hinting at it already done by the much less symmetric-looking pieces.

That puzzle has 12 corners, 12 type A edges, and 6 type B edges.

It's unbelievable! For stickers, check http://www.cubesmith.com which is run by Twist member Jello33. I don't know if he has enough colors, but people who have purchased his stuff have been very happy with the quality.

It's unbelievable! For stickers, check http://www.cubesmith.com which is run by Twist member Jello33. I don't know if he has enough colors, but people who have purchased his stuff have been very happy with the quality.

Other shapes this approach can be applied to - the rhombicuboctahedron and the rhombicosidodecahedron, (for those two all the faces have to move an even number of units when rotating, resulting in a very different solving experience) and the prisms. I believe that the triangular and pentagonal prisms were prototyped by mefferts but never mass marketed.

Okay, I just went nuts and decided to enumerate all the 'rubik-style' puzzles, by which I mean a puzzle which has static rotating 'face centers' which have two meet at 'edges' and in some places three meet at 'corners'.

Here they are -

Puzzles with only one type of slice -

skewb
rubik's cube
limited rubik's cube - with the requirement that faces only rotate multiples of 180 degrees. We'll just pretend that the variants where only one or two sets of slices are limited to 180 degree turns don't exist.
megaminx
half chop - modding this to a cube should work very well
big half chop

Puzzles with two types of slices -

truncated tetrahedron
weird thing 1 - this one has the limitation that the square faces must rotate 180 degrees, not 90
truncated cube - has a variant where the squares can only rotate multiples of 180 degrees
truncated octahedron
weird thing 2
truncated dodecahedron
truncated icosahedron
weird thing 3

And here are the ones with three slices -

great rhombicuboctahedron - there's also an identical-looking variant where the octahedra have to rotate multiples of 180 degrees rather than 90
weird thing 4 - like the truncated octahedron, but with the limitation of that the truncations can only rotate multiples of 180 degrees
weird thing 5 - there's a variant where the squares have to rotate a multiple of 180 degrees
weird thing 6
great rhombicosidodecahedron

And some awkward-looking 2-slicers I missed on the first pass through (subsets of weird things 5 and 6)

weird thing 7 - there's a variant where the squares have to rotate a multiple of 180 degrees
weird thing 8
weird thing 9
weird thing 10

If you're interested in making puzzles in this vein, that should keep you busy for a while.

It's possible I missed something. If anybody spots one, please let me know.

And I feel the need to compulsively reiterate that my last enumeration skipped the prisms, because they're an infinite set and aren't viewable in jaap's sphere applet anyway.

I used the truncated icosahedron for a couple of reasons. I am a chemist by profession and have worked with buckyballs quite a bit (a pure carbon molecule with 60 carbon atoms located at the vertices of a truncated icosahedron, for the nonchemists)and found the symmetry very beautiful. The other reason was to choose something very challenging because I tend to learn best that way. I learned much on this project. The kind comments on this forum have inspired me to continue with this project a little further and to continue playing with some other puzzles designs. I think I have found the areas that tend to get hung up on the inside and and may try to modify the parts in a new version. I also would like to try my hand at home injection molding (a good excuse to make a new version). This time I will use black plastic and good vinyl stickers (thanks Quinn Lewis and Ed Cambridge for your suggestions of where to obtain).

Does anyone out there know what the best plastic is for these types of puzzles?

Bram, As you noted the 3 and 5 prisms have been protyped previously. I was eyeing them anyway since the zome centers easily have the trigonal bipyramid and pentagonal bipyramid symmetry and look relatively straightforward and much fewer parts to make.

I am impressed with your list and the work to define and illustrate them. Certainly a large number to think about The main other ones I am most interested in(and I believe are a subset of your list) are the other Archimedean solids, although ones with more than 2 types of polygons would need a lot of different types of parts. Thanks again for sharing your work on your list.

That looks like A awesome soccer ball puzzle that you made there. No offence taken!!!!! I hope.

That brings to mind of a puzzle I thought up of 5 or 6 years ago. The shape of a puzzle would look like a Small Rhombicosidodecahedron and it have cuts on the squares so that it can move like a rubik cube; it have cuts on the Pentagons so that it can move like a Megaminx ; it have cuts on the triangles so that it can move like a Pyraminx.

Small Rhombicosidodecahedron

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SmallRhomb ... edron.html

Trust me you can always have more layers like a rubiks revenge cube, 4 layer Megaminx and Master Pyraminx on the puzzle above.

Please tell me what you think about my puzzle above.

Looks great. A lot of different pieces to make.I am having a little trouble seeing how you were planning to make the squares move like a rubik's cube (square pieces) and keep the pentagons like a megaminx. (maybe if the square face cuts were closer to a skewb face?) It is challenging to me, because it has 4 polygons faces, 3 different, meeting at a vertex. In any case you should mock it up and build it. I would love to see it.

The archimedean solids which can be used for rubik-type puzzles are the platonic solids, truncated things, and great things. The great rhombicuboctahedron requires three types of edges, of which it needs 24 pieces each, and two types of corners (really the same corner of opposite handedness) of which it needs (wait for it) 24 each, and it needs three types of face centers with 6, 8, and 12 each respectively. That's 146 moving pieces total. By contrast, all the truncated things require two types of edges, one type of corner, and two types of face centers, so that's 5 types of pieces versus 8 for the other one. The truncated tetrahedron (the one which requires the smallest number of pieces, but is the most interesting to CAD) requires 12 of one type of edge, 6 of the other, 12 corners, four each of the face centers. That's 38 moving pieces total, not all that much more than the rubik's cube's 26.

The difficulty of a puzzle, by the way, has a lot more to do with how the pieces interact than the total number of them. In fact, if two puzzles have similar movement then usually the smaller one will be harder because the bigger one will give the person using it more room to maneuver. The puzzle with motion most similar to the one you've already built is the truncated tetrahedron. The truncated octahedron comes in second but the square faces form a subgroup rotating 180 degrees, something which neither pentagons nor triangles do.

It seems that most indications point to a truncated tetrahedron for a reasonable candidate for your next puzzle. I personally would find the CAD and fabrication of that a little intimidating, due to all the sharp angles, but you said you wanted a challenge... (If you're willing to give up the pure archimedean solid aesthetic you can cut the truncations a little extra deep and make the hexagonal faces not regular hexagons, which helps make the puzzle rounder and the piece sizes a bit more even. That would also help reduce the misleading impression that the hexagons can rotate 60 degrees.)

The triangular prism, by the way, is a close relative of the rubik's ufo. If you restrict the ufo to only rotating multiples of 120 degrees about the big slice, it forms everything but the middle slice of the triangular prism.

Another neat feature of the truncated tetrahedron: you can sticker it with exactly four colors, by making the faces which point in exact opposite directions be the same color.

Eureka!!!!! Thats it and thanks Bram for helping me find it!!!!! Thats what I was talking about in my first post in this topic. So is it possible to make? Looks that way to me anyway. I know lots and lots of pieces!!!!!!

Yes Darren, it can be built, although it's very similar to and considerably more pieces than the great rhombicuboctahedron. The movement is a little interesting because the faces must rotate an even number of units, which is particularly interesting for the square faces because it gives them exactly two positions, and 2-state faces make for very distinctive solving experiences.
An even odder variant is the great rhombicuboctahedron with the restriction that the octagons can't rotate 90 degrees, because that has two types of faces which can only move into two positions.

The half chop, by the way, is a very different solving experience because every slice can only move to 2 positions. It also has the odd restriction that some of the pieces move in distinct 'orbits', and can never move into the same position as some identically-shaped pieces. There's a bunch of odd parity interactions as well.

Weird thing 1 has some orbits as well. It isn't clear what the appropriate shape is for that puzzle though.

Simply beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Are you serious? If you are, who do you think you are? We are a friendly forum here, and we don't take kindly to spammers, which is what it looks like you are. If you haven't anything nice to say, don't say anything.

EDIT: Sandy, could you delete this phoney please?

If you check what the user has been writing, seems like its just a bot that says a few choice comments to get its advertising websites around.

If not, they're just weird.

I assumed this after the post, oh well, we get one or 2 every year. No need to ruin the fun I guess!

I already left Sandy a PM earlier today flagging this and several other "spambots" for deletion. I'm hoping that he can also ban the IP or IP block in question as well as this isn't the first Time a casino has been advertised here.

I just find it bizarre that to gain publicity they go around knocking lumps out of their prospective customers.

Back on topic, I don't think a puzzle has ever scared my quite as much as the tutti frutti.

why does it look like paper to me. Are the stickers actual stickers or are they some other special material.

The reason it looks like paper on the stickers is (as mentioned in a previous post) that they are inkjet paper stickers. I wanted the cross hatching on the pentagons and could not find any in vinyl until recently. The yellow beige is the natural color of the alumilite polyurethane I used. I am going back and making a new copy with black dye in the urethane and new good vinyl stickers. Unfortunately with this many pieces, and my limited time to work on it, it goes slowly making all the copies of the pieces. I will post new pictures with a movie of the movement after I finish. (The good news is I discovered what was making the alignment critical before turning a face and have improved the model pieces) I learned the importance of filleting and/or chamfering the edges of all internal parts which meet other parts. Now things tend to self align.

wow!! very impressive puzzle you made there!

i just recently learned to solve a megaminx and this puzzle really strikes up an interest! if you ever do consider manufacturing/selling, add me to that list of potential buyers

i hope to see more of your creations one day!

The more I look at this puzzle, the more exciting it seems. At first, I did not like the differences between the two types of edge pieces. But your explanation of the 60 degree turns clarifies how this puzzle would work. This is a really fun looking puzzle, and I'll look forward to seeing more about it.