Hello.

I found a Mr.Okamoto's new cube. Its name is 'Floppy Cube'.

http://puzzle3d.hp.infoseek.co.jp/floppycube.html

It's 1x3x3 cube. I can't understand the corner parts' mechanism at sight.
I'm still surprise for his puzzle.

Saw this last night. Standard cubie size and looks great.

That's so cool! How in the world did he make that work??

You can see that the centre lifts up a bit along the edge halfway through a turn. The corners cubies can therefore simply have a foot along their inside edge.

Its funny, just the other day I was thinking of a mechasim for this. I love the cuboids. Too bad the only one I have is a 2x2x4

Very cool indeed.

Looks like the center caps are not solid plastic to me. That would explain how it works. I wonder how stable it is mid-twist?

I have also thought long and hard about a mech for a 1x3x3. I never got around to building one, of course, but I was planning on just using a bandaged keychain cube as a base, and the jumbo cubies as attachments (they are a perfect size match). Then I'd attach the corners via rods and cut away enough of the caps so the rods could get by. Getting the rods small enough and strong enough is the key to that design, I guess.

Sandy