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Stradius
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A hybrid of a face and corner turning dodecahedron in a shape very close to the Great Icosahedron.

The Stradius is primarily based on the Starminx III (a deep corner turning dodecahedron) mechanism that Andrew Cormier built in 2010. This iteration introduces extended cross pieces on each face of the dodecahedron.
The shape is very close to that of the Great Icosahedron, however this model's geometry isn't quite accurate. The inner body shouldn't really be a perfect dodecahedron. The inventor just made it that way to make it easier to design the turning of the "Spires". Had it designed as a pure Great Icosahedron, it would have needed to do much more finessing to get the cuts right without sacrificing aesthetics.

The original build was simply unusable to the instability of the pieces in the outer-most shell of the mechanism being overly loose. The inventor learned that the tolerances of pieces in a multi-tier shell mechanism are quite particular given which layer they fall into. Ultimately he had to reorder a new set of parts for the outer layer with corrected tolerances which luckily helped solve the stability issues but of course like so many projects, if one problem is found more are likely to surface before completion. Anyway, problems aside, the inventor ended up having to reprint other replacement parts which he did with FDM 3D printing instead of the SLS printing that the rest of the puzzle was made up of. So this is kind of a hybrid of both technologies with about 13% of the parts being FDM printed PETG and the rest in SLS Nylon.

The turning quality is unfortunately very catchy, and the spires themselves are a little tricky to grip due to their shape. Which can make it difficult to apply equal pressure to each piece as you try to rotate them. So he went ahead and created a small tool that fits onto all of the points simultaneously, greatly improving the usability of the puzzle. Also just like the original Starminx III this puzzle does indeed jumble. As such the Stradius gets very confusing, very quickly.

Parts: 436
Stickers: 360
Diameter: 180 mm
Weight: 603 grams

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