Gear Snake by OSKAR

Oskar · **Joined:** Mon Nov 30, 2009 1:03 pm

Hi Twisty Puzzles fans,

Gear Snake is a concatenation of four 2x2x2 Rubik's Cubes. The puzzle is build around four commercial 2x2x2 Eastsheen cubes. Because of the gears, the four 2x2x2's interact with eachother in a quite unexpected way.

Connected Cubes is a predecessor of Gear Snake. The friction of the mini Eastsheen 2x2x2 limited the concatenation to two cubes. The larger Eastsheen 2x2x2 have less friction, so I could concatenate four of them. The result is a quite big (and noisy) twisty puzzle.

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

Enjoy!

Oskar

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Gear Snake v5 - prototype - view 1.jpg [ 58.69 KiB | Viewed 2045 times ]

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Gear Snake v5 - prototype - view 2.jpg [ 59.38 KiB | Viewed 2045 times ]

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Luke · **Posted:** Sat May 01, 2010 6:26 am

Looks awesome! Just watched the video.

incredible · **Joined:** Tue Mar 02, 2010 5:20 am **Location:** Germany

Besides that great puzzle idea :!:

the sound of it is really cool :wink:

I could find my kids everywhere in the house when they start playing with it :lol:

No secret places anymore!

kastellorizo · **Posted:** Sat May 01, 2010 7:36 am

Oh my God! We are getting closer to materialising the (sick) puzzle I proposed five years ago:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4167

:lol:

Brilliant Oskar, simply brilliant!

Pantazis

Drewseph · **Joined:** Mon Feb 04, 2008 8:57 pm

okay, wtf.

this is getting annoying.

how do you do it!?

every time you make a new puzzle you appear to break the laws of physics! o_O

how do the gears stay connected if they can break apart?

awesome job oskar! congratulations!

Luke · **Posted:** Sat May 01, 2010 12:08 pm

Drewseph wrote:

okay, wtf.

this is getting annoying.

how do you do it!?

every time you make a new puzzle you appear to break the laws of physics! o_O

how do the gears stay connected if they can break apart?

awesome job oskar! congratulations!

That's a new idea for a puzzle! Combine the TriGear concept to these gears!

Skewber · **Joined:** Sat Sep 19, 2009 7:52 pm

Wow.
Maybe with gears in the core you could do this
After seeing this, anything's possible. (I mean seriously, unconnectable gears?

kuBer · **Posted:** Sat May 01, 2010 1:24 pm

Very very interesting... I like it a lot :mrgreen:

Oskar · **Joined:** Mon Nov 30, 2009 1:03 pm

kastellorizo wrote:

... getting closer to materialising the (sick) puzzle I proposed five years ago:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4167

How about Bram's Fortress? I am still looking for a sponsor for that one.

Drewseph wrote:

how do the gears stay connected if they can break apart?

It is a bit of an optical illusion. Each 2x2x2 cube has two corner gears. Three pairs of those are connected, forming the snake of four in a row. The connection is clearly visible in Connected Cubes 2x2x2. For Gear Snake I made an attempt to obfuscate the connections. I did my job a bit too well, as I can hardly find the connections while playing.

Oskar

kastellorizo · **Posted:** Sun May 02, 2010 1:22 pm

Oskar wrote:

kastellorizo wrote:

... getting closer to materialising the (sick) puzzle I proposed five years ago:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4167

How about Bram's Fortress? I am still looking for a sponsor for that one.

Indeed, that is the next logical step! And the sponsoring part sounds like
a nice topic to be discussed between a group of puzzlers.

Pantazis

DLitwin · **Posted:** Mon May 03, 2010 11:27 pm

Oskar wrote:

The friction of the mini Eastsheen 2x2x2 limited the concatenation to two cubes.

With a bit of silicone lubricant the ES cubes, even the minis, move really, really fast compared to any other brand. They move well without lubricant but it does make a large difference. Try preparing them with a bit before adding on the gears and I think you will be happy with the result.

Dave

Gear Snake by OSKAR

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