Long ago I was looking into other Elemental based designs and sketched out some ideas on paper. Many I disregarded as either impractical or not overly interesting, including the 22 piece Neon based configuration in the lower left of the sheet below. I thought of this as the next extension of the Neon concept, completely skipping over a what should have been a logical six piece extension.

It's a good thing I have a smart friend with access to a laser cutter

VeryWetPaint took the DIY I sold him and decided to mod it by cutting the plunger tops to make a new piece. Why didn't I see this configuration! This adds six more pieces and (since Carbon has an atomic number of six) he decided to name it Neon Carbide.

It's very pretty:

One of the best things about this configuration is that by adding these extra pieces there are no more blocked moves (on Neon the plunger top blocks one other plunger from moving).




The one minor downside to this mod is that the edge pieces are not fully contained by the puzzle when a plunger is pushed. They don't fall out but wiggle a bit and so I thought this was an Elemental puzzle that deserved a redesign.

As such I present Sulfur (atomic number 16):




Not as cool a name as Carbon, but the six piece Elementals are not overly exciting. This is just the prototype so the pieces were unetched/inked.

It really looks quite a lot like Neon and is the same size (i.e. smaller pieces):


Yes, on this last one I carelessly inked an image on the front. It looks terrible but will be replaced.

Enjoy,

Dave

P.S. For those with the Neon DIY: VeryWetPaint has access to a laser cutter and may have interest in selling an aftermarket Neon Carbide DIY mod kit

Wow, those look like great puzzles! I like the look of Carbide the best, possibly even better than your Neon.

That's right, I intend to offer a parts kit so owners of the Neon DIY can convert their DIY puzzles to Neon Carbide. And you could convert your DIY back to a standard Neon if you don't like the new version.

But I've been temporarily cut off from the laser, so I can't actually offer the parts yet. Portland TechShop encountered unexpected delays while replacing their laser cutter, so I'm just waiting until they resolve it. Soon I hope.

Funny thing is, I sent my only set of functional parts to David Litwin because I expected to cut replacements at Portland TechShop. But I can't cut new parts until the laser is replaced, so David has the only functional Neon Carbide DIY currently in existence!

Send me a PM if you own a Neon DIY and you're interested in a Neon Carbide mod kit. Then I will let you know when it's available. It'll be cheap.

This is incredible! I knew there was something "missing" that could be done to the Neon to make more movements possible. I don't know how I missed this!

-d

Looks great!

Just one more idea, now that you mention that you were looking to increase the number of pieces/configurations to make it more interesting: couldn't you also split each triangular tile into 4 smaller triangles, so that you could do half moves?

Split into four yes, but six no.

This was the idea behind my Krypton design at the bottom of this post.

The problem is the same I encountered with Chromium here: Pieces squish around too much when you don't have them supported firmly. The more you pack together, the less stable things get, and fast. But I'll keep exploring solutions...

Dave

Yes, well spotted, I corrected 6 to 4 before you submitted your reply.

Then how about increasing the thickness as you split the triangles? Also, how about making the corners much more rounded so that they don't lock?

Probably you've already tried all these ideas, but just in case...

Thickness wouldn't help because they would squish up on a completely different axis... and super-rounded corners would only increase the squishiness because of all the extra space in between.