Hi!

I received a number of requests from our puzzle designers to tell them how I design geared puzzles. Some asked particular questions, some asked to make a tutorial video. But I though that the best way to share my experience with you would be some tutorial article.

So, I've written this article "Designing geared 3D twisty puzzles". It describes basic principles of designing gears in general and guides you through the whole process of designing a gear puzzle on the example of Gear Pyraminx.

I hope that my work will raise interest to gears among puzzle designers and will be helpful for the community. Even non-designers might enjoy seeing what lies behind a puzzle design.

Any questions/comments/suggestions are welcome.

Timur

Very interesting insight into puzzle designing. All you need is Solidworks and a detailed mathematical understanding of the workings of the universe

Hi Timur,

This is an extremely interesting tutorial! I've never really thought much about gears before - yet they are an important innovation in our everyday lives. It's intriguing to see the work and effort that's needed to create functional gears - and then the next task of converting them over into a particular shape and working puzzle. Quite amazing! Thank you for putting together and sharing this information with us.

Jay

NICE!!!! I really need to read this a few times. I admit till seeing this I had no solid plans with gear puzzles as I felt they were beyond me. With this they now feel reachable.

Thanks,
Carl

Wonderful article, Timur! It should go in the archives of the TP site!

-Eitan

I've tried to submit it to the article section, but haven't got a reply from the article section moderator yet

Yeah, what's with that anyhow?! Actually, it falls to me since we don't seem to have an articles moderator these days, and I'm the slowest of the slow with some of these things. Unnecessary apologetics aside, you can now find Timur's article posted in the Building Specific Puzzles section. I’m starting to think we need a new section for 3D designing/printing. One more contribution in that vein and I'll start it up.

On a related note, does anyone love the idea of scouring the forum for How-To posts and reshaping them into official articles (Here's a good example pointed out to me by forum member mortsemiousabout 25 years ago), or soliticiting such from those who seem to have widsom to share, or interviewing noteworthy people and creating articles like this one? If so, you sound like our new articles moderator!

Sandy