Hey guys!

Finally, after HOURS of unfinishing work, here's the nomech Pentultimate! It wrks with very small but extremely powerful magnets.

I copied the color scheme from my Teraminx, and I actually made the sticker with recycled Teraminx vinyl sheets (it's a square sheet with Teraminx stickers inside but there always a part of the sheet that the stickers fit in perfectly )

Size: 5cm from opposite faces, about as big as the mini gigaminx (clauswe)

It spins VERY well (which is kind of logical knowing is uses magnets )

I hope you enjoy the pictures and the video!

- Greg

P.S: As you can see in the video, the center pieces can be used as whistles!!

EDIT: I'm sorry, you can't hear the whisle because of the sound being 1 second late, but the sound of the whistle (end of video) is superloud and can make your ears numb 10 meters away

Designer: Grégoire Pfennig

Looks great but it's so small! Too bad you have to sort of pull it apart to turn it. (But it's made of magnets, what can you expect?)

Wow, cool.

Ebay auction tomorrw

- Greg

Greg,

Well done! Wow, finally a magnet-based mechanism that seems to work. I suggest that you put a sphere inside to prevent lateral sliding.

Oskar

I'll make sure there's a sphere inside on the next one, although I'm not sure that will be very soon (maybe two months)

Only one thing though: I used 120 magnets for 6 cutting planes

Great stability, but lots of magnets that took me two hours to glue

- Greg

Oh, wow, that's amazing!
I think the sphere inside would solve any problems that exist in this one.
Too bad there's no such thing as a magnetic band...(like a super powerful magnet that's a full circle, then you could just cut it into parts for each cutting plane, and eureka! the puzzle wouldn't have to come apart mid-turn)

That's a lot of magnets! How did you make sure each magnet got oriented correctly? What kind of glue did you use to hold them in?

I did a recent project with magnets, and I designed a cap to lock the magnets in place to avoid using any glue.


If you do decide to build a puzzle around a sphere, I suggest you use those polished acrylic spheres they sell at craft stores and TAP Plastics because they're really smooth.

There are some of those, but they are small, I'd need to make a pentutimate with 1cm edges

I correctly orientated the magnets very easily: the - are oriented toward the inside of the corners and the + are oriented towards the inside of the centers

And I just used average superglue and it worked just fine!!!

EDIT: @VWP if I had used your caps, the puzzle would've fallen apart, because there would've been too much space between the magnets. Here, when a move is finished the magnets are maximum 0.1-0.2 mm away from each other, which causes them to attract a lot!

- Greg

This is interesting. I'm quite surprised that this actually works reasonably decently - even without an internal sphere.
You could get away with making that internal sphere just the minimum .7mm thick and you could still add lots of holes so it would actually not be very expensive to print.

How would you rate the turning? Does it take much force to get it moving? After half a turn, do the magnets repel each other by much?

Have you checked with Jason about the auction? By all reasonable means you should be allowed to sell it, but to avoid confusion later on I would suggest you'd just hit him up about it, since it sort of is his puzzle (in that he pioneered it). Ignore this if you already have.

It's interesting that we still haven't seen a Pentultimate with the shells mechanism - given that that seems the most widely-known approach.

I wonder what other puzzles could be made feasible using a magnet mechanism like this.

Woo! You know how much I've been wanting to see this puzzle! It looks great! Do you ever plan to make the other NOMECH Pentultimate with no magnets?

that would be impossible, how could a twisty puzzle be made without a mech OR magnets?

It's his ball and cage mech. Technically still a mech, but a simple one.

The original Pentultimate didn't have magnets or a mech either.

erm, I think the knucklehead mech counts as a mech...

I will make an interanl sphere, as I said in the next version.
For the turning, it is more than decent, for the only reason that if you kept on turning a slice for 2 minutes using like, 3 finger on each side you would get tired. But if you hold it like I did in the video, turning is not a problem at all!! And after half a turn, the magnets don't get too repelledat all! The two parts barely seperate (maybe 1 - 1.5mm)

I have asked Jason about a month ago with the auction, yes, and someone made the same reflection after I sent him a PM. I always ask the original builder before making an official auction.

Using a mechanism like this, I woukld only make puzzles with few cutting planes, because the more cutting planes, the more magnets (here 120/ on a master pentultimate 480)



I'm sorry, but I don't think so, it would be too risky to make an almost surely badly working puzzle for a big amount of money, I'm limited in money...

- Greg

Are you going to make an icosahedral version too?

How much was the full print?

About 60$ for the print, then 20$ for the magnets, 2 hours of work on CAD to make it perfect (20$) and 4 hours of work (40$ equivalent) So I'd say the price could go at a given 140-160$ given how much the first auction goes for (that's not a reason not to bid -.- )

EDIT: I might sell it directly on shapeways for 90$ and put a link to magnets.

- Greg

P.S: All that money goes into making more puzzles.

Wow. And this is totally not what I expected.
I thought you would have taken a magnetic sphere and just metal for the pieces. Or taken a metal sphere and magnets inside the pieces, so that the magents point to the inside. I have heard of this kind of mechanism that it doesn turn decently at all. But I have never seen one. It was discussed before though. In a topic about the 24 Cube I think.
This one turns surprisingly well (from the video). I cant believe you can just pull and it snaps back together all the way it is supposed to. Looks cool too.

This should be renamed micro pentultimate, it's so small!

The nomech magnets mech is the same as dice cubes, right?

Yes I believe the nomech mech (what? ) is the same as dice cubes.

- Greg

in the v2, how do you plan on improving it besides adding a sphere to it?

It has everything needed for a Magnets Pentultimate, I don't think more improvement is needed for a puzzle like this with magnets. I never though it wuold turn out this good, and here there is nothing to improve!

I might design a Pentultimate with rails later on, but not this week... I've got a lot of homework...

- Greg

An inside ball and rails and magnets? thats sounds like a good idea!

I think he means just rails...

Woops, explanation fail

I mean this one v2, only magnets and a ball, and the next version of the Pentultimate WITH A MECH, only rails.

- Greg

Please ellaborate! ONLY rails? like with the no-core 3x3x3?
How would this mech look like?/ behave?

and at the same size?

I'll explain in three words:

twelve layer mechanism

No more answers for today, I'm off to bed.

- Greg

Great job, Greg. Did you end up getting the magnets from K&J magnetics?

-π (Eitan)

You know me well

- Greg