Hello everyone!

We are now ready to announce our greek patent number!
(see attached files)
The first picture is a photo of our patent as it published in the monthly magazine of O.B.I (Industrial Property Organization of Greece) in the issue of May 2004. Anyone can see this if he goes to http://www.obi.gr/online/edbi.asp
and he has a good knowledge of Greek language.
The second one is the translation of our patent summary as it is registered
in the International Bureau of WIPO(World Intelectual Property Organization) the last month.
In the following days we will inform the speedcubing community and the puzzle funs for the mass product of our invention.

Thanks
http://www.olympicube.com

Congratulations! A patent award is cause for celebration. Best of luck in your efforts to see it produced. There is certainly interest here.

Congratulations indeed! I am so happy these large cubes are getting closer to being manufactured. I know I am definately interested in these new large cubes, and await them becoming reality!

Congratulations! That's incredible! Too bad I can't see the whole patent yet. Did you patent it (or applied for the patent) in any other country? If you did, what are the patent/application numbers? That might allow people who don't know Greek to read the patent. At least I did not find anything on http://ep.espacenet.com.

Aleksey.

If you need any donations I can pitch in.

Wow, nice to see a mechanism picture. It raised some questions of course. I can see how the corner now can connect solidly to the core.

The corner appears to angle in to allow the adjacent pieces to swing past.

What raises a question for me is this... I can see tapering on one axis, yet, is there tapering for the other two axis which there must be (presumably).

This may be just the way the artist has represented it. I'll have to wait for more illustrations.

Do I have the following right so far? This is what I see after looking at the patent diagram and then making the diagram below:

If the form's surface pieces rotate as would be expected - parallel to those surfaces - most of the underlying slice plains are conical, since they are not perpendicular or parallel to the surfaces.

The three cones supporting rotation for any three faces belonging to a corner intersect in an area that is the shape of a tapering rod with a curved triangular cross-section (which could be reduced to a circular cross-section within that area). The rod connects an outer corner piece at one end and an inner anchor at the other. (In the diagram below three conical rotation surfaces are shown in wireframe extending to the form's surface. The rod at their common intersection is shaded, as are the corner piece and its anchor.)

Nested inside the mechanism from six anchor caps (at the six ends of three axes pieces and just below the form's surface) are spherical 'anchor surfaces'. There are half as many nested anchor surfaces as there are pieces along an edge (when that number is even). The corner assembly is anchored inside the inner-most anchor surface, held there by anchor pieces in layers above it. (The surface of the sphere in the diagram below is the outer anchor surface.)

There is room for the corners' anchors to be wider than their connecting rods (and thereby provide hooking ridges for them) because in the area where the anchors are there will not be anchors for the next rings of outer pieces. The anchors for the corners are made to fit within the intersections of three wider cones. The width can be somewhat arbitrary as long as sufficient space is left for the anchors of the other edge pieces that will be next to and between them. There will probably be a best balance of widths with the stabilizing needs of the outer pieces.

There is room for other connecting pieces to be thicker, with more surface for bearing against their neighboring connecting pieces to contribute to the stability of the mechanism where needed, although the mechanism could be imagined too with narrow mechanism pieces connecting each outer piece to its anchor.

What looks like a wheel in the patent diagram seems to be a hollow cross-sectional spherical or cylindrical band of the area just outside the outer anchor surface, but may be more than that.


In any case, congratulations on your exciting ideas and patents and good luck in extending them in future variations.

I think that the subtly curved outer surfaces you show in other pictures are very nice. A surface texture of curved bumps and indentations, alternating for instance on every other surface piece, would be a nice way to help people tactilely relate to the complexity these subdivisions embody and could be quite pleasing visually and tactilely.

Yes, this is what I was trying to get at (but you said it much better). The anchors would have to concial. I wonder how strong it would be and how smooth. But it seems to work.

hi
louis approach the inventor after reading his summary and show the figure but still a lot.
the sure is that what we mention in our web page for a year is true although before
3 days none could believe us!
all the questions for the inventor' s project will be answered when the International Bureau publish on line his patent.
http://www.olympicube.com

Below is a second diagram that I think summarizes some of the parts of the mechanism that I tried to visualize and describe above. In the diagram is a representation of the inner anchor layer coming together. The arced pieces between pairs of smaller triangular anchors would each be divided into four parts with basically rectangular sections. They could be connected to the four edge cubes shown with connecting pieces that also have rectangular cross-sections and span the space between the associated pair of narrow, triangular cross-section connecting rods.

Some additional thoughts:

What I described above as caps at the ends of the three axes rods really seem from the patent diagram to be three segmented rings that probably simply sit in grooves between the three mutually perpendicular pairs of inner layers. These rings are what would keep the nested layers of anchors below them and the cubes the are linked to from coming out of the mechanism. The segments of each ring that are attached to the ends of the axes rods can rotate on them. (The segmented rings and axes rods are not pictured below.)

Also, perhaps the outer anchor layers that sit on top of the ones below them to keep them in place also extend into those lower layers to further stabilize their motion. If this would be helpful, it might be happening, for instance, in the six square openings in the first anchor layer (which are partially represented below).

This is still all very confusing to me. Are these rods meant to be rigid? If so, what happens halfway through a turn, when the corner pieces are overhanging? Maybe this is mentioned in the earlier posts... and I have somehow missed the crucial point.

Yes, the connecting rods as I have pictured them are meant to be as rigid as is possible, given their thickness, to avoid their twisting in unwanted ways.

If I understand correctly what you were referring to - a question of whether the connecting rods as show here would be visible by protruding from between layers and cutting into the space for the outer surfaces of cubes beside them while in mid-turn - perhaps the diagram below will help. In the 6x6x6 it seems they would not.

However, in the case of cubes with more divisions, the rods would be longer in relation to the whole form, and it appears they would show and conflict if the form's sides were flat. Perhaps the rods could be modified in those cases to embed in the bases of the next surface pieces diagonally in from them by pointing inward parallel to the layer they connect to at first, then angling towards the object's center. That double angling might make them more discreet and prevent them from conflicting with the outer surfaces of cubes beside them in passing. This would allow the non-curved faces versions of these objects, although, as described so far, the mechanism would show at least a little.

It seems likely that the situation of the rods showing in cubes with divisions higher than 6x6x6 is why the inventor begins to arc out the outer surfaces beginning with the 7x7x7 cubes. Those surfaces would need at minimum to arc outward in greater amounts for each successively complex division, which isn't noticeable in the drawings we have seen. If that basic idea is correct, perhaps the maximum arcing - the arcing needed for the 11x11x11, is pictured applied to them all.

If you meant what happens when the connecting rods need to cross the rings that bind the anchor layers together, I believe the connecting rods pass through them while a set of four ring segments (two from each of two rings) rotate with the connecting rods (along with other segments of the rings that fall between the those segements), and that that is the purpose for their segmentation.

I agree about this being confusing - and that it can be especially confusing while hearing and trying to follow someone else's attempted understanding while thinking out loud, and when that understanding is incomplete and the description may be inaccurate in some ways.

Yes -- that was really all I meant (hadn't considered your second point). Thanks for your diagram and clarification of what seems likely for N>6.

The patent is publicated at http://ep.espacenet.com/espacenet/ep/en ... tm?search5 :
CUBIC LOGICAL GAME
Patent Number: GR1004581
Publication date: 2004-05-26
Inventor(s): VERDES PANAGIOTIS KONSTANTINOU
Applicant(s): VERDES PANAGIOTIS KONSTANTINOU

The patent is 71 pages in greek language (no equivalents available yet) and covers the 6x6x6 cube up to the 11x11x11 cube. Included are roundabout 200 pictures (about 33 per cube). To much to show here, so as an example the following pictures from the parts of the 6x6x6. I hope that the concept will work and all of them become real.

starting to get more excited...

This is so totally different to the design I originally came up with. I should post more pics I guess. Found a nice one the other day.

Just been going through the patent design. There's been a serious amount of work gone into this.