In this thread I stated my intention of a shallow cut Mixup Cube. Carl/wwwmwww using POV Ray modeled the design showing my concept was not doctrinaire. He thought the puzzles jumbled and technically, he is right. However because doctrinaire says nothing about fudging, I present the Shallow Mixup Cube. Note: I'm still working on the inside and will prototype this eventually; it is not just an empty shell.

This is a top view showing the complex design.


The solved puzzle.










Carl is technically correct because this doctrinaire puzzle is fudged. The fudging is so, so, so small that a non fudged version of this puzzle would work just as well. The tolerances between pieces would be more than enough to make up for the slightly imperfect geometry. The four circles on each side are actually 11 sided polygons and cannot rotate in place. Any questions, please ask.

Can I buy the prototype? I really want to get a series of these Mixup puzzles from you, seeing as you have several others in your shop and now these shallow Mixup Cubes.

The question is can I buy the prototype This has so many small pieces that it will need to be big, really big. I'm glad you like the soon to be series

I would suggest removing the pieces that surround the eleven sides parts. I would guess that they are responsible for having to make the puzzle so big. It's not like anyone would sticker them, right? (Although they might dye them).

Without them the circle(almost) pieces would be free to rotate in place. Now that it's summer I'll have time to design a version with them and a version without them and see how much extra it would be to include them. Dyeing them would be a good idea. Man would that make this puzzle hard.

This puzzle is a lot like the Constellation Six. Don't be afraid to make the circles completely round and fudge a bunch of those smaller pieces out of existence.

I agree with both of you, in a way. I'm almost finished with the Shallow Mini Mixup Cube design. It is stripped down to just 5 types of pieces; corners, edges, centers, edge-center wings, edge-corner wings, and circles. It is 48.4 mm to an edge and uses my Mini Mixup Cube as the core. I have thought about the Constilation Six before and the difference is its circle pieces are flat on their faces. This allows them to rotate without changing anything. On my puzzle however the circles rotation changes the shape of the puzzle. I'm thinking of just leaving it like it is so that when solved the user can rotate them to make a perfect cube. Does anyone have a different idea?

Along with the Shallow Mini Mixup Cube, I'm designing the Shallow Mixup Cube. This puzzle will have all the pieces and be big. It would feel wrong to me to just leave such a great puzzle nothing more than computer code.

What if you 'pillow' the cube, so that the circles seem to be flat against the curved surface? I think it would work rather well, but may not work due to the nature of the puzzle (shapes of the pieces)

Just finished the Shallow Mini Mixup Cube and uploaded to Shapeways. After I test out the prototype I'll see if the rotating pieces are a big problem or not and if pillowing would help. Plus, the puzzle will NOT cost an arm and a leg