First to post and view this monolithic puzzle!


Incredible! Turning looks like it can get a alittle difficult

the prophecy was true... it's really here. Unbelievable. I never thought you were the ony, I thought you were more the plastic plate person who mods only pyraminxes. But this! The highest order twistypuzzle ever!
And again:

Now I see why you said you were working on other projects...


Incredible.

Not quite as neat looking as the first gigaminx pictured on this forum.


...

That might be because that first gigaminx was made in photoshop rather than solidworks. This is a great feat, you have a massive amount of patience dude! I would never ever have the patience to cast and clean that many pieces!

So, that begs the question... How is the turning?

WOW, Anonymous builder #3 finished!?!?

I thought this was gonna be months of waiting!?!?

looks decent. , how does it turn? can we see a video!?!?

=)

Awesome work!

you gotta answer us, How was assembling it? how long did that take?

this is gonna be a beast to sticker!

Brb, I have to change my pants...


Ok


OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!


That is the coolest thing I have ever seen!!

Why did you do it in white? Isn't white harder to work with?

didn´t expect it now

very nice build, but it looks like it needs some sanding...

very impressive

Sweet!!!!


I LOVE IT!!!


How come it's uneven though? Just asking

to stop all the "it needs work" comments he said in a PM

"It turns fine. As soon as the last piece went in, I shot the picture and uploaded it. I got paranoid and didn't take the time to align anything!"

Ah fair enough, history has just been made so I can see your reasoning behind it

ITS ALIVE:D! Great job!

Amazing! Looks like a beast.

Here are the makings-of pics. It took us weeks to make this thing. The pics of my kitchen table was an all-nighter we pulled sunday. We took turns assembling and cleaning up the parts, then Dave finished it the past two days. Assembly of this thing is possibly the most difficult part. More details later.























































Notice there are TWO cores in that last pic?

awesome puzzle David

Amazing making of pics! I can't believe you made two of them! And you used my molding method =) I'm honored!

well congratulations! I'll have mine in black please

please don´t pop this thing

Spoiler below:
though it´s unpoppable

Awesome, those pieces are tiny!!!

I mean, wow. And 2 of them as well, OMG!!!

holy petaminx! ahhh dude puzzle of the millenium. seriously.. no1 will ever top that.. man dude that is sooo crazy, especailly all the work that went into that.. im speechless

I wish I had a friend that modded... Looks like you two had a freekin blast though.

*double take* *rubs eyes*

Truly an epic achievement. Very well done.

Freakin' blast. Yea, we had a great time. Except for the couple of times when an entire segment (that takes about 1/2 hour to assemble) collapsed.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and to those of you who I owe puzzles, stickers, or other misc. projects- maybe now I can actually get back on track.

BTW, there are not two of them completed yet. We hoped to have both done, but it took so long, we focused on finishing one. This will probably get stickered in the next two days. We'll have more pics soon enough. And I'm sure Dave has a bunch of "making of" pics to add.

Drew- of course your method. How else?

BTW, in case anyone's interested, 99% of this puzzle was cast using Smooth-on Smooth Cast 300, not alumilite. It's better in my opinion, and maybe in another thread, I'll get into that discussion.

What a MONSTER

Fascinating construction pictures. An amazing feat of both design and building. Guys, this is just stunning.

That's just amazing

It's kind of strange that a 9x9 dodecahedron exists before cubic 9x9 (unless Mr. Verdes has a prototype).

Guys thanks so much for all the photos and the effort! Simply stunning work.

That is amazing... I really want one but i need to get better at casting

that's just amazing.

Wow. I'm awestruck.

I never thought we'd actually see a petaminx. Once Drewseph posted the files, I thought it might be possible, but extremely unlikely to see it completed.

The teraminx thread got me addicted to this forum (and that was before I had an account!). And now this... I'm lost for words.

*picks jaw up off the floor"

I'm flabbergasted on this! It's just amazing I utterly speechless. Great work doesn't begin too describe how amazing this is. I'm just awe struck.

First off, I want to say sorry to Frank for posting such an ugly picture of this beautiful puzzle.

Frank and I put a lot of time into this seemingly never-ending project! With all the talk of a Petaminx showing itself any day, I didn't want to waste ANY time getting a picture of ours uploaded....... plus I was at work and shouldn't have been building a puzzle, and almost got caught! (Now I can't share this link with anyone from work)

Thanks Drew for relaying my PM to the forum and for providing this amazing design!!

As soon as I put in the last piece, I took a few quick pictures and threw everything (all the stuff you see on Frank's table and more) into a garbage bag, posted a pic and RAN to my meeting!

I'm hoping to get home early enough from work tonight to do a couple of things...
1) post more pics (better looking ones and my progress shots)
2) have a glass of wine with my wife and relax!!
3) enjoy the puzzle for a day or so before it goes to Frank's house to get stickered. That's right Frank.....you're stickering it!


We did have a great time building this, and I learned a few casting tricks from Frank along the way. Not only did we have a section of the puzzle blow out at Frank's house, it happened to me again last night.......a much larger section. If it wasn't for Frank's involvement in the project, I would have thrown the rest of the puzzle into the street!! This was BY FAR the most tedious project ever! When/If an Examinx makes its debut, I want nothing to do with it!


Shhhh.... the price may go up if it becomes too popular.

Oh my jesus. that has got to be THE most complex puzzle in terms of construction and mechanisms. How many pieces are in that thing?

I bet you two feel like Dr frankenstein. IT'S ALIVE!!!

Assembly in my opinion was the toughest part of this puzzle, and Dave accomplished that. Building the parts- that was just time consuming. Really, the toughest thing about casting the pieces was making sure there were no air bubbles. In larger puzzles, you can tolerate some bubbles. In this puzzle, since the parts are so small and thin, a single air bubble can literally make a piece unusable.

There were a lot of challenges we needed to address along the building process, and eventually we will discuss them. For now, I just wanted to mention a few things and make a few comments. I think Dave hasn't made any comments yet because he's either sleeping (after no sleep for 5 days, working on this) or he's quivering somewhere in a corner repeating over and over "it's finished! it's finished!". Well done, Dave!

BTW, these masters were printed in FDM, and we only had one set of masters, so the parts that built the puzzle were second generation copies. So it *can* be done, if you are careful.

We are "anonymous" builders #2 and #3. I am really looking forward to seeing builder #1's puzzle. That one was printed using polyjet.

Good luck to anyone who tries to tackle this design, and most of all, thanks Drew for an awesome design, and for making the files available to build this thing!

Oh, and why cast in white? Because we always prefer white puzzles!

Regarding nobody able to top this- I welcome the challenge of building the Examinx.

Petaminx:
Designed by Andrew Cormier
Cast and built by Frank Schwartz and David Calzone
Assembling completed Feb/3/09
Stickering completed: Feb/?/09.

(I have the stickers cut, as soon as Dave gets me the puzzle, I'll start stickering it).

[edit]: looks like we will be doing some more fine tuning on this before it will be stickered. stay tuned..

I was looking at the progress being made this morning before I went out to run some errands and I was thinking about how cool it would be to see one of these within the next week or two. Definitely didn't even imagine getting home from grocery shopping, sitting down at my computer and seeing one already done. Wow... just amazing. Great job.

What day did you start this puzzle?

This had to be posted:

This was posted EXACTLY two minutes after my class in high school got off the library computers!

I am not going to say wow. Darn, seems I contradicted my self, but none the less. This is not epic, nor, amazing, nor cool, nor incredible. If it were to be called any of them, it would just be demeaned! It is odd that you made two of them at the same time, though working with someone else, most wouldn't have been able to resist have two half finished Petaminxes in front of them without putting them together. Control and discipline.

I do wonder if Drew was using this as a diversion. I like psycology and the first thing I would do to get all heat off my back after the Teraminx, is have someone else build something better. Drew I would geuss has something big planned. Do you not? Am I actualy on to something? It couldn't be an Examinx. A pyraminx professor sounds like it would be to simple and uniform for him. Maybe it is an Examinx. Between the time from handing out the Petaminx files and now, his crack factory could have pumped out a simple Examinx.

Also, Drew, of course they used your molding method! You method is the only possible choice if we want to be alive when it is finished! Expotencial methods are the only way with your monsters. And again, with you being so fast compared to most, what have you been doing? The last paragraph was meant as a joke at first, but is it?

Oh, and right before I post, you put up Examinx plans!!!

IDEA MAY BE VALID!!!

Look at the file names of my progress photos and you can get an idea of how far along we were at a particular time. I think I got the masters somewhere around mid Jan.

(right-click, properties to see the filename).

So then,

Drew, are you going to upload the updated files for the petaminx to bedardpuzzles.com or are you going to leave them as they are?

Wait, if the peices are going to be different sizes anyway, why is it pillowed?

I can't wait to see a video of this beast! please post something soon! I'd love to see how stable it is!

-Drew

I was half right.
'our Superman' => Frank Morris (has the username Kal El) => Frank => flambore

Sooooo many molds! I can't believe it's here! Great job guys, you are amazing! I wasn't trying to guess who the mystery builders were but now that they're revealed, I'm not at all surprised, these guys are puzzle factories!

Wow this is truly awesome! Great work guys!

And flambore, I'm glad you decided to give Smooth-Cast a shot. Was it the 300Q or just the regular 300?

I may only hope mine turns out half as good as this the only reason im not finished(for those who wish to hear) Is because i am having some difficulty getting my oomoo rubber, i believe i have it straightened out now, but i am not impressed by their site right now

Ryan- just regular 300. I'd rather have the longer potlife. This one is about the same as the alumilite black.

Paul- we're not the mystery builder #1. I still don't know who that is, but we've been neck-and-neck with him. I have to give him kudos for doing this himself. I'm looking forward to seeing his completed.

I'm a little surprised nobody figured me out, since the one photo Drew posted had my desktop (the grey granite top) that's in every photo I post. Had I known he was going to post that, I would have put the puzzle on cardboard. Well, anyway, it's all in fun.

Wow! Simply amazing. You even finished before the 9x9 cube came out. Very Impressive!!!

how is superman connected to frank morris?

Frank Morris is sort of like a superhero to speedcubers. See here, for instance.