Here is the 10th in my series of Radiolarian Puzzles. Radiolarian 10, aka Radio Nova. I started this puzzle in August of last year.

Radiolarian 9 is a nice place to be. Many pieces have disappeared, and the remaining pieces are all in the same order of magnitude of size. Radiolarian 10 is not so fortunate. It is an explosion of pieces, so I'm calling it "Radio Nova". The explosion happens as 6 cut lines cross the center faces, creating TEN NEW PIECES in each center. At the same moment, we must maintain the corner pieces for the last moment before the "starminx" like Radio Star (the upcoming Radiolarian 11), where the corners FINALLY disappear. Maintaining the old corners with the new center explosion makes this puzzle very, very much of an "in-between".

I have wanted each Radiolarian to be the same size. I've counted on new pieces (that appear as cuts deepen) being offset in mechanism complexity by old pieces (that disappear as cuts deepen). It has worked well so far, but this Radiolarian has too much going on. If I keep the new pieces and maintain the old pieces, the parts get too small to be stable. In fact, new parts start to live in the same order of magnitude as fillets.



Still, since a truly stable version was estimated at $2500 to print, I had to try anyway. I'm not sure what I was thinking.

Even the inner layers of the puzzle look concerned.





Still, I forged ahead with the assembly and 10 hour stickering. (Some of the stickers are 1mm, and have to be individually superglued.)









Unfortunately, I have found that completing a single turn grinds the smalles pieces into nylon paste, which falls inside the puzzle to cause more problems.







To cap it all of fantastically, I placed the puzzle on my laser cutter, which has a slanted surface. As I folded up the "photo tent", this happened:



I don't have the appetite to reassemble right now so I bagged the pieces for a possible family photo in the future.


Sorry, there will be no video.

If there is anyone out there with $2500 to spend, I would like to extend the request for a sponsor for a much larger version of this puzzle which I believe can be strong and stable. If you are that person, PM me please, and we can discuss.

My God... After the impressive photos at the start,
my heart broke when I saw the photo after it fell...




Pantazis

I don't know how, but those small pieces on the faces kind of frighten me...

Jason, a beautiful, glorious failure! The only person who never fails is one who never tries. At least you got some pictures before mgh changed to 0.5mv^2 I can't wait for R10.

I must say that you create a very good design. A very harsh challenge too. There're so much extremely small pieces that will make the puzzle very easy to click with each other.

Salute to your courage of printing this.

Beautiful puzzle and a tragedy for the prototype, but in the end it will merely be a setback. I'm curious to see how the Radiolarian 10 turns and I'm sure that eventually it will be made.

I can't work out which looks more cute:




In fact, I can't even tell the difference!

AHAAAAAWWWW *melts*

I love both that way.. now that I see the comparison.. awwww


Beautiful cube by the way.. LOTS of pieces.. brr.. but beautiful. So sad it fell.

I would NEVER have the courage to attempt something like this. I salute you for trying.

Luckily I generated a generic text for alle the Radiolarians. Writing a description they deserve would be a pain without it.
I feel sorry for the broken puzzle.

Bloody hell!

Sorry for your loss.

Thomas

Its just beautifull !

the last two pictures made me really sad, i hope you can find a sponsor

Beautiful... right up to the last 2 pictures. Major kudos for even trying this.So what size do you estimate is needed to produce a stable version? Are you doubling the edge length which would give you 8 times the volume? If such a puzzle is ever made it must be photographed next to Oskar's Over-The-Top.

Carl

Regarding print price, Jason, you shell pieces much thicker than almost all other designers. It makes for very nice, sturdy, heavy, solid puzzles but it isn't necessary for for functionality.

Also, since pieces are hollow, and keeping the wall thickness constant, prices grows with the square of the radius, not the cube.

If you saved material everywhere you can without sacrificing structural integrity you could probably get the price down much lower.

I was thinking the same thing-- as they size up, the walls can stay the same or size up enough to keep the larger pieces stable. It could mean that I lose the 10% density discount though which doubles the price.
And I think it would need to be at least 2x larger in each dimension, maybe more. If I get a sponsor, I'll start from the smallest parts, and size out from there. I wouldn't mind paying extra if it goes higher than $2500. It could take two people to turn...
For now, I'm happy to have had it for a few minutes, and I'm going to work on the Radio Star next.

I thought video killed that back in the 80s?

Nice work Jason!

I guess one of the lessons learned from this one is be very careful naming a puzzle "Nova"! Knowing your tenacity when you have a goal, this will be re-assembled for the family portrait.


Adam

p.s. I wonder if a different printing method would work better than SLS for the small pieces. It looks like you are pushing the minimal resolution for that process.

You are on a roll haha

Why not print the small parts in metal? Sure, it would look weird, but it might be a cheaper option...

Could you try printing the small pieces in white detail or frosted detail? I know they would be weaker but it might be worth a shot.

Please Jason, please please consider this. I love your Radiolarians and I am sure these would be worth a shot!

Believe it or not, I think even metal parts may be too fragile. And even if they were very strong, there is the fact that those small parts live in the same scale as fillets on other parts. This means they can fall into gaps created by rounded corners on another part. One of the benefits of making a larger version would be that the fillets could be the same on the other parts, so these small parts could be made too big to misalign that way. Also, the fillets on the small parts could be increased, which needs to happen. They're too sharp now, but I was afraid to reduce the foot size by filleting more.

This is kind of like having parts from a picocube in a teraminx.

The lesson here, is to be careful when framing a part full screen in solidworks.

By the way, this puzzle has 605 parts altogether!

This is exactly the experience I had with the Big Kahuna a year and a half (wow... where has the time gone?) ago. The difference in size between the largest and smallest pieces was absolutely absurd.

Looking forward to #11, which I'm guessing doesn't have such tiny tiny pieces. Actually, won't those tiny tiny pieces end up underneath the surface, causing just the same problems as they do now?

-Eitan

Wow, the Big Kahuna is cool!
To answer your question, on the Radiolarian 11, some pieces around the corner can disappear, so the smallest parts are allowed to get 3x larger internally. I have high hopes, but we'll see!

I would like to see a version of the Radiolarian where all stickers have the same area - to me that is one key property of beauty that I always look for in a puzzle, like TomZ's Curvy Copters.

If I remember correctly, when I measured the areas of stickers on the Radiolarian 3, they were multiples of Phi (the golden ratio), which is not too surprising since Phi comes up all the time in dodecahedron and icosahedron geometry.
If you want equal areas, check out Oskar's Icosaix.

They don't need to be equal shapes, but I think equal/similar areas does make a puzzle more pleasing to the eye.