I had wanted to get a little further along before showing it, but I couldn't help but bring it to the Berkeley meet up. So I might as well share with the rest of the list.

The Kilominx is my take on a corners only Megaminx. Thomas came up with a very novel design that I completely missed, that is widening the gaps between the corners to allow them to slide under each other.

I took another direction, which was to make cutouts in each to allow them to swing past each other.

My prototype is based on the poor quality tiled Megaminx, but my next revision will be on a Meffert's clone (stickered Megaminx). The cutouts are far larger than they need to be as I was measuring based on 3mm plates but used 1.5mm instead. The next revision will have smaller cutouts and I think a better look.

The plates are laser cut. Half of the work was rounding the hidden edge pieces, and the other real time sink was beveling the plates so they fit together at the proper angle.



As the face turns, the points of a set of corners slide into the cutout of the piece next to it:



Enjoy,

Dave

Looks great, I look forward to the finished version!

Nice idea

Oooh, shaply! So what about the triangular holes in it--will something go in there?

And you say that you missed Thomas's design?!? How could that be--didn't you didn't scroll through three pages of year+ old bumped threads to find the new item? What's wrong with you?!?

I thought Impossiminx would sound more appropriate.
Great work with those corners Dave!




Pantazis

I've just got why this name. kilominx < megaminx < gigaminx < teraminx

I love it, I'm looking forward to see it finished. Good luck!

It was great to see this Saturday. It's looking great, and I can't wait to see it done!

What I meant was when I was designing mine a few months back (yes I am that slow to build anything) I immediately found that adjacent flush pieces would cut into each other on the turn. It seems obvious in hind sight, but I figured they would naturally slide under each other like the Brilicube. But that has faces meeting at 90 degrees

So my solution was to keep the pieces adjacent and cut out where they would intersect. What I missed was that by widening the gaps between the corners uniformly you could have pieces that had no cutouts (Thomas design). I guess in some sense the widened pieces are uniformly cutout, whereas mine are cut in a non-uniform shape.

So what I was trying to say was that I missed considering his solution when designing mine. This is the reason for my knuckleheaded (to borrow Bram's term) comment on his thread that it *must* be based on an impossiball. I just didn't think you could have the faces clear each other without cutouts on a non-flexible spider, because I had just tried to solve the same problem but went another direction.

Dave

its an interesting shape for the pieces, are you going to leave it that way?

did you bevel/round the edges by hand to get the correct angles?

The cutouts are larger than they need to be so my next set of corners will be better. I don't know if it is worth the time on a prototype to fix the old ones.

But the cutouts are necessary to allow movement (without Thomas-style gaps between pieces) so they have to be there. I have some thoughts on having free swinging "doors" of plastic to fill them, but haven't yet experiement with it.

Dave

Yes, and they aren't particularly precise as this is a prototype. I started on a grinding belt sander, but my first rounding was not enough so I did some more work by putting the foot of the piece in a vise and using a file.

They don't really have to be rounded, they just have to be out of the way. Some are ground flat, and I could even grind them concave if I wished, as long as I left enough edge surface to hold the corners in properly.

Dave

It has been some time but I thought I would post an update on the Kilominx:

No stickers yet, but I have completed the shell. I haven't re-done the wide-cut pieces yet but that can wait.

Here are a number of pictures, as well as some discussion on how I bevel the edges of the plates to fit together. With 60 plates to cut and bevel, doing them all by hand wasn't something I was looking forward to.

(Sorry in advance for any fuzzy photos. I was shooting inside so the lighting wasn't good, but if I used the flash all detail was lost. So I used no flash which meant long exposure and the chance for wobbly fingers to blur things)

First up, a picture of the unstickered but complete puzzle, and one next to a new knock off Megaminx:


Now a few to show the movement, particularly the undercutting of edges. You'll note how much smaller the cuts are from last time, now they are just as large as needed for this thickness of plate (1/16", 1.5mm):




OK, so the pieces are made up of 60 laser cut plates (5 per face, 12 faces):

The laser cutter gives vertical cuts, but the plates won't connect well with 90 degree cuts:

So they need to be beveled. For the first face (5 corners, 15 plates) I did this by hand, guessing at the angle and it was a lot of trouble.
So for the rest I decided to build a custom angled vise to hold the piece at just the proper angle:



I used a thick scrap of acrylic about 3/4" thick, and cut it on a band saw at an angle that was half of the corner angle. I then drilled (poorly, unfortunately, but good enough) holes and tapped them, and screwed in screws to tighten and losen it. This way I can hold a piece at the correct angle:

Once at the correct angle I just have to keep the vise parallel to the file (or sandpaper):

The end result is a nice beveled edge:

I even tried putting three pieces in at a time, but I am not sure if it takes longer to get them aligned in the vise than to just do all three individually.


So there you go. For those of you who bothered to read/view this far, here are two pictures of the internals and pieces in better lighting:

This shows the cut down internal edges of the chinese megaminx.

Here are a few corners on their own.

Enjoy,

Dave

Very cool. Don't forget to show stickered pictures soon. That vise is an especially inspiring idea for me.

I can't wait to recieve it!

why does one need to be better?

Great Job!

Looks great! I like the look of the gaps in the centers, it makes the puzzle look a lot more interesting. Good Job!

Nice!

Also, you'll be *a lot* happier with the new knock-off megaminx that that kind you've used--I've done things with both and can say this with certainty!

Thanks for taking the time to give details on the process, and explain how you made this. I wish I could see more puzzles being built like this.

Nice job, Dave!

Thomas', and it isn't much of a contest...

...yet Wait until it gets a proper set of stickers.

Even better yet, wait until I make my next version on the stickered megaminx instead of the cheaper tiled megaminx. The movement on this one is still terrible and I'm trying to decide if it is worth the time to tune it up versus just making a new one. I can make it nice but it means lots of piece filing (all the corner nubs should go, and many of the edges are still too large and need rounding). Starting with a smooth moving puzzle is the way to go, but at the time all I had was the tiled version.

So once I do all of those things I think it could be quite nice. But at my speed this may be many, many months

Dave

I quite agree, I just bought five of them and they are pretty nice. A slight bit behind the Mefferts but for 1/3 the price, and particularly with Mefferts out of stock, definitely a good deal.

Dave

If I'm not mistaken, won't they make the gaps required bigger?

that looks great, i can't wait to see it stickered, you should also put up a video on youtube when it's done

Not really.

The size of the cutouts is determined mostly by the thickness of the plates. With infinitely thin plates, you would need no gaps at all. With 1/16" plates these are the gaps I need. If I beveled the gap edge I could make it even smaller, but that is even more work.

The width of the face cut (deeper on a tiled vs. stickered megaminx) will just change how much I cut down the edge piece and how much surface area the plates have to stick to.

Dave

Really nice. Beautifully engineered.

Wow, Dave, nice work! I love it. I really like your approach with your jig, too!

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiice!!!

Very very professional handling of this puzzle making Dave!
Love the photos!!!




Pantazis

lol

You think he will sell it?

I like your Kilominx a lot Dave! I wish I had one. I like the idea of your angled vice too. Get it stickered!

Guess who recently took the vinyl cutting class at the TechShop?

OK, I spent way too much time on this one. Note to self: If you start with a poor puzzle, it takes a lot of work to try to improve it. I started with the cheap tiled megaminx (Chinese Megminx) because I had an extra and at the time Mefferts was out of stock so a real megaminx would have been a very expensive prototype.

Movement is still poor because of the underlying puzzle is poor, but it turned out pretty. I spent a lot of time filing the internal pieces to try to make it move better, but have given up at this point. I could eventually make it work smooth, but it is just a prototype and it would be less work to build a new one from the new stickered Megaminx (and I have a few...).

I used 12 colors, from scraps at the TechShop. They had a nice purple, but not as a scrap and I was pressed for time so I didn't buy it. In general their vinyl is a bit thin so in the future I'll probably buy vinyl more suited to puzzle stickers. But the gold and silver were very nice.

Enough talk, enjoy the pictures:







Dave

Not the prototype, it moves terribly. And I like to keep my prototypes.

But perhaps in the future I'll build one from a decent base and auction it. I'll probably want to cast the pieces though, it was a lot of work to build 60 tiles and finish 20 corners, and then grind down the 12 centers and 25 edges.

Dave

Looking good! Factory made!

Thomas

I want it. It's my birthday on friday (*for real this time)

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It looks great! I want to get a Kilominx now! The stickering job is amazing. All the work you put into the Kilominx was worth it. I like that the color scheme was different too. Great job!

Amazing build Dave! Every bit of your work amazes me. I really like the stickering job on this too, especially the use of the gold and silver metallic. If you decide to make more, let me know cuz I want one!

The shape change is pretty neat. it looks great, congrats

Dave,
it's amazing to see how perfect your prototype already looks like.
If you finally optimised the internal mechanism in a way that you are
happy with, the it will be really a gem.

Congratulations!!

- Frank -

That came out looking really nice--good one!

Now all you need to do is apply the same approach to the floating edges of a pyraminx crystal, and you'll have a well-matched set, like this:



Cheers!

Nice work, I've been hoping to see it finished since you first posted about it.

It's really professional-looking for a prototype. The stickers are way too perfect, they're crazy good - great colors, size, and alignment. Pro work, man.

Absolutely awesome!
Vadim

Hmmmmm... Edges only Megaminx. I have access to a laser cutter and sticker plotter, what is to stop me? Well it'll have to wait until I order a backup Pyraminx Crystal. Sorry, I'm just not cutting into my Brilic for this mod...

On second thought, have you ever tried to move your Crystal by just gripping the floating edges? Although pretty, I'm not sure this would be very stable. I suppose the only way to know is to give it a try...

Dave

Actually, I was trying to indicate an edges-only pyraminx crystal. I think it would be stable. Maybe. I also wonder if that would be more, or less difficult than the regular one? I was actually a little surprised how simple that puzzle is--it only took me about an hour to work it out, and I'm terrible at solving!

But I'm getting way off topic here--good luck with V2.0, the better-version megaminx

Cheers!

Great from concept to brilliant result.

Nice bevel jig. (I'll be using something similar to cut several awkward angles on my latest build)

Taylor is bringing my Kilominx to DCD since I won't be able to go myself . He was nice enough to take a video.

Unlike the pictures, here you can see how poorly it moves at times.

Dave

really cool, to bad it doesn't turn so cool. I would still buy it

hasnt this already been invented? and can we see a video of it?

EDIT: never mind about the video. i found the video of it. but hasnt this been invented?

coughlookatthedatescough

In regards to the video description...
It's a CORNERS ONLY megaminx, not an edges only.

This bump was a long time in coming. Basing the Kilominx on a better core (in this case a PVC stickered Megaminx) has been on my list for a long time.

For the next version I didn't want to cut, bevel, glue, and finish 60 plates for 20 corners on top of the 30 edges that have to be rounded down. So I set about making a few masters and casting them. There are a few nice advantages of this:
1.) The hand work for a master is 1/20th of doing it for a whole puzzle. Well, 1/10th in my case as I made two masters.
2.) I could add milliput and fill out the piece a bit, giving it a rounded edge which is far nicer
3.) Casting, although a bit of investment, goes pretty quickly.

Here is a hand built corner with just plates offset from the base a bit.

I chose to cast just a finished cap for the corner, not the whole corner itself. This made for an easier mold, and also had the large advantage of leaving all the moving pieces injection molded. This means I know the puzzle will move well and don't have to worry about lots of part line cleanup for smooth movment. Also, I like the properties of injection molded plastic better than resin when it comes to interior pieces.
Here is the cap with milliput applied before detailing

Here are a great set of needle files I just got for detail work. They are about 2-4mm wide so pretty tiny. But they are 150 grit and coated such that I can use them under water (wet filing = no dust!)

Here is the cap after trimming down and sanding:


The molds came out great. All mold lines are on the sides so I have a nice clean exterior.

Here is how the new pieces move past each other, and the new rounded edge:

The only problem is the masters are not 100% perfect. This may be because of a slight twist when attaching to the underlying corner or some other problems (I need to look further into it) but there are larger gaps than I want between the corners and some pieces are a bit off on alignment.

But it moves smoothly and looks quite sharp I think, a definite improvement over the initial prototype:

I ran out of alumilite black half way through, and finished up with SmoothCast, so it is a two tone puzzle for the moment. I'll fix this when I get more resin, but it is an interesting look for an unstickered puzzle.


Enjoy,

Dave

P.S. Ignore that other puzzle in the pictures (on the left), it's just a silly thing I am working on.

Dude! An inverted 3x3?!? I missed the announcement on that one!
looks sweet!