Hi Twisty Puzzles fans,

Minimal Twist is a twisty puzzle, equivalent to the Skewb puzzle. It is a very minimalistic, skeletal design, even without stickers. The parts are held together by dovetail connections.

By minimizing the volume, this puzzle is also as cheap as can be achieved with 3D printing. As you may know, 3D printing is typically charged per printed volume. Given the low volume and low surface area, there is no room for stickers. Instead, I decided to dye the pieces.

Watch the YouTube clip.
Buy the puzzle from my Shapeways Shop.
Read more at the Shapeways Forum.
Check out the photos below.

Enjoy!

Oskar

Very nice, Oskar!

With the corners filled in, this could be the true void skewb, but as it is, it's even more mechanically impressive. How is the durability?

Durability? It is nylon, so it will probably last longer than you or me.

Oskar

This is fantastic.

Alex

I think I'm going to save up some money to get one of these printed. I'm curious as to how "thick" each piece is.

LOL Oskar, your puzzles are getting thinner and thinner!
(it's no wonder there is no room for stickers).

Great design and another step towards total evaporation and invisibility!




Pantazis

Oskar,

in case each of the pieces got some kind of a mechanism to plug a surface piece to it, you would have a generic mechanism and plug in surface shapes, which could form different geometric objects. So one puzzle core
could become the base of all the shape mods.

Isn't that a business idea?

Frank

Great work Oskar. Would it be possible for you to design a void 2x2x2, without seeing any of the internals. On the building and puzzle forum part, I've been talking about a void 4x4x4, and you seem like the only one who could design a core!

See Polaroid Cube. If you are interested to see what I am working on, you may check the NOT YET PROTOTYPED section of my Shapeways Shop.


Thank you for suggesting this reason for people to buy more than one Minimal Twist


Here is a view of the cross-section. The unit size is 1 mm. The cross-section is 6x6 mm.

Oskar

Crazy... This makes my head spin just by looking at it. Great job.

Will someone plan to get one of these then fill the "corners" in to make a truly void skewb?

wow...
Gotta see this done

Just when I thought my skewb collection was complete. The only thing keeping the urge to buy one in each available color at bay is lack of funds.

I'm an IT guy, so reuse is my business . But it's not just a reason, it's a new task for you to do!! With the 3D Skewb/Polymorphinx/Skewb/Skewb Ultimate Mèffert showed, how easy it is to build new puzzles. But he did it himself, still defining the puzzle shapes (ugly or not - a question anybody can decide for himself) and selling them as unique puzzles. Fairly a cheap way to generate money. Nothing else. A more intelligent, really "Plug and play(!)" mechanism would leave the decision about the shape to the user/player/customer as you give him all the parts he needs to create the shape he likes most.

(P.S. to the female readers: please replace 'he' by 'she' etc.. I am aware, that I used male gender in my short text, but preferred to keep it readable. Sorry, Rox, Celia, .. who might be concerned.)

Void Void Void Skewb.

Null And Void Skewb.

Nominated for Most Skewerable Twisted Prop in the movie "Death Becomes Her".

Sorry for the bump but I didn't want to side track the thread about the Holey Skewb on Mefferts too much. To see where I'm coming from see some of the later posts there.

http://twistypuzzles.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=18628

But I was curious. Could inserts be designed that could be popped into place to make the Minimal Twist look like a Skewb Star?



This way you could have the normal Minimal Twist puzzle printed in black and if you put in the Skewb corners you would have a void Skewb that didn't appear to have ANY centers. Yes you'd see the black Skewb faces of the Minimal Twist but they'd be recessed from the surface of the puzzle and they could be left unstickered. To me this fits what I think of as a Void Skewb better then the Holey Skewb as a Void Cube doesn't have face centers... not just a hole through the face center.

You could also just put in the Skewb Diamond corners and leave the Skewb corner inserts out and have a Void Skewb Diamond.

Just seems like you could design two new pieces and have 2 whole new puzzles so I though it was worth a suggestion.

Carl

That's exactly what I meant.
Or make it a Mental Block or ... It should be easy. Just design surfaces.
Surprisingly to me, so far no plug-in pieces have been designed neither by Oskar nor anybody else.

Why?

D'oh!
Oh, why didn't I notice that?? In 2008 tried to design a series of puzzles that entailed putting a floating sphere inside a Skewb, but gave up after trying to design a suitable dovetail mechanism in clunky BRL-CAD. Oskar's Minimal Twist is a perfect foundation for those puzzles--it's got room for a sphere inside and places to plug-in the other parts.

I gotta' get me some Minimal Twists and get to work!

Carl,

Thank you for your suggestion. I made the inserts that you suggested available from my Shapeways Shop. They should fit tightly in Minimal Twist. I do not plan to prototype the inserts myself, as shape modding is not my thing. If there will be a buyer, I hope that he/she will post some nice pictures in this thread.

Oskar

Hello Oskar,

Nice!!!! You are MORE then welcome.

If it weren't for the fact that my wife left her job to move here with me at my new job and that my home back in Mississippi hasn't sold so I'm now paying rent and a mortgage on one income, I'd jump on this in a heart beat. My wife should soon have a new job but there are a few things that will have to come before puzzles for a bit. Maybe by Christmas...

Thank YOU.

Carl

Just noticed on the Shapeways page for Minimal Twist that if you move your mouse over the picture there is a "view in 3d" option. If I click on that I get this:


Well I've downloaded it and installed in 3 times now and even rebooted my PC and I still just get the same message. I'm running Windows 7 and using Internet Explorer 8 at the moment. Has anyone gotten this to work? Just wondering if the issue is at my end or at Shapeways.

Thanks,
Carl