It is possible, don't forget about circular cuts. It would just be a pain in the butt.

Especially if it ends up actually working.

I mean it should, in theory... but come on, how many other things should also work in theory?

I'd say about 90% of the "theories" on this site end up working...

I have not been here in a while but I will fund the $3500. I have the money available.

Ridiculous enough, nice mech.
Who's gonna put it into reality?

Well! Good luck Adam! I'm positive it will work, I can't think of 1 of Oskar's or Bram's designs that have failed.

YES!


WHoo! I cannot wait to see this.

Holy...wow, um...that's...yeah.

THANK YOU ADAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!^Pi

If I ever meet you I will thank you again and buy you a soda (or beer if I'm >21 when I meet you)!

I honestly did not think anyone would fund this for a very long time. Adam, you are a now a hero among us haha.

$3500 for a 17x17x17 ~ Quite a trade off. This design is amazing and the fact that someone is actually willing to make it shows how the people here are the best.

Best of luck to you.

Adam, you are amazing. I'll volunteer to build or sticker or whatever needs to be done if no one else is willing to do it.

I'd be willing to cut the stickers for it! I can get stickers cut for free and free vinyl, I'd just need the puzzle so that a template could be made.

LOL where have *you* been lately?

And I must say, that is some impressive comeback.




Pantazis

He must have had some sort of trigger set up.

As soon as someone posted something absolutely absurd and awesome, he got an urgent message.


Good luck Adam! This had better be at the next (4 or 5) DCD(s)!

-pi (Eitan)

so, looks like that

That probably looks more like it. But still you can see that the cuts for the outer faces in your picture are curved. If these would be strait now, the corners would automatically get a bit smaller too. Than I guess it would look like what a pillowed 17x17 would or could look like.
The curvature of the cuts that I meant still derives from the fact that you painted plack lines on a cube and than pillowed. Now if you pillow first an than put straight lines on it you would have what the higher order Vcubes look like. Still no one ever said that a 17x17 cube from oskar has to look like a VCube or that it can't look different.

Epic win.

That's just about all there is to say on this one. Great job Oskar on the design!

Soon oskar is going to be $3500 dollar richer

On DCD 2009 Oskar was disappointed how his BigChop came out. Does that count as failure?

Fantastic!

289 stickers per side
1734 stickers total

average non-edge or corner piece = 4mm

Good luck stickering that thing.

It will definitely be a pain but I'd love to see one of these complete and stickered!

Good luck to anyone who has a go at this beast!

Alex

Actually that comment made me think of his 4 connected 2x2x2 gear snake puzzle... watch this video.

http://www.youtube.com/user/OskarPuzzle#p/a/u/2/e87slW-jP2s

Carl

so is this puzzle seriously gonna get made??

So who is going to own the final puzzle Oskar or Adam?

Please let me know if you hear from Adam again, he's been playing jokes on me for the last week. so please watch out

Rick, How have I been playing jokes on you?

You have been sending me random crap on AIM....

just print masters

And cast over 1000 perfect pieces, that if you get only slightly off it ruins the entire puzzle?
I don't think so... with more pieces than a petaminx that sounds ridiculously tedious.

I have a great idea! How about there are 2 of these made simultaneously, using the same masters, but then Tony can pillow one of them before it gets stickered. Sound like a plan?

If only we had a 3-D printer, a ton (literally) of plastic, and a hell of a lot of vinyl...

I would seriously tackle this, given 1 master of each kind of piece. I would also need the casted pieces made for me, computer-precise. Then maybe someone could put it together. And I was never good at cutting things out. Maybe someone could try that for me. Given THAT I could make one!

Although I hope this puzzle is built I can see some major problems with it. The ingenious thing about the V-Cubes design is that even the small parts extend quite some way into the mechanism with hooks. This of course help prevent pops. On Oskar's design though I feel that parts would simply fall out when certain moves are made. We have already seen on complex puzzles like the Petaminx that gaps open up during turning and on something like this the gaps would be bigger yet the parts smaller and less well held in. Even if it was made 100% accurate the 'looseness' required to make moves would also allow small parts to easily come out in my opinion.

I would love to see this monster built, but anyone who is willing to give it a try, I don't think you should do it. It's really expensive, and noone knows whether it will work or not. I think the risk is too great with this kind of money involved.

I'm sure that even if it doesn't work as well as anyone thought it would, it will be prized still for being an epic creation. Most likely the turning quality will be just plain terrible, but the credit for devoting oneself to making it is an epic achievement. Like previously mentioned, the "new Petaminx".

Even if the pieces were built with precision all the way down to the micrometer, you still have the friction coefficient to deal with. It appears to be based loosely off the 5x5x5 Rubik's mechanism, in which the even layers slide within the recessed grooves between the odd layers. On the second iteration, all five layers become odd, with grooves allowing the four even 9x9x9 layers to lock in. Ditto for the 17x17x17. You could build the 9x9x9 cube without infringing on the V-Cubes patent, as it is merely a n expansion of a Rubik-like 5x5x5 mechanism.

The problem is that internally, there is an enormous amount of surface area to the sliding inner layers as compared to the outside area of the parts. It would take a relatively large amount of force to overcome these friction forces, possibly even more than the thin, brittle pieces could withstand.

I disagree, although the pieces on the outside are small, they are large on the inside, and therefore the points where friction is greatest also has the most sturdiness and can handle more stress the best.
I still believe this design will work, and, although I would never fund such a project unless I had 10s of thousands of dollars at my disposal, I think Adam can sponsor it without fear of failure.

Subject: 17X17X17!! BY: OSKAR VAN DEVENTER!!



Fantastic!
I would have done it, too, but this year was too expensive, so I have no spare money for this amazing piece. Good luck!

Unfortunately it doesn't make sense to share efforts. That would mean you own the odd and I the even rows of the puzzle

Frank

Whoever wants to build this but hasn't got the funds should issue shares to finance the project. Upon completion, the builder sells the puzzle, gets payed for his labor and pays back the shareholders. Depending on how much the cube sells for, people can make a profit or a loss on their shares. I'd be willing to take the risk and buy $20-30 worth of shares .

If Adam is paying for the puzzle, why would Oskar get it?


Sounds like the attempt to do a group build of the Petaminx. There are always problems with this sort of thing. Who gets to build, who gets to sticker, who cuts the stickers, and if it doesn't work, it probably won't sell for more than the $3500 to build the thing, so everyone's out their shares. Also, I don't know for sure, but is that $3500 print price polyjet or some other very high resolution printing? Because this would never fly with the more coarse FDM or SLS printing.

@ 10cm^3 it would cost $1,501.50 in sls. Unless Oskar is taking a somewhate large cut for profit (233%) I think it was in higher quality material.

Well if it's all printed, there'll be a lot less labor. One guy could probably do all the finishing ( with maybe one extra guy making the stickers)
Breaking even would be fine in my opinion. I'm ready to lend a bit of spare cash to see this big cube happen

How much lenght of side is it? Oops!(4x15)+(~20x2)= 10cm?

and how weight is it? if 1.5kg , what will player happen

Density of plastic is roughly similar to water at 1g/mL (it either floats or sinks slowly, depending on the material), so even if it is solid plastic it should weigh about 10cm x 10cm x 10cm x 1g/mL = 1Kg (2.2 lb).

Still, I wouldn't like to drop it on my toe!

Why? Is it because it would hurt or becuase it would make reassembling the 6x6x6 seem like a minor 3x3x3 pop?

Some money could be saved by hollowing out the edge/corner pieces, which would cut a small portion of the cost without sacrificing much structural integrity. Basically, most of the really large volumes of non-structural space within those parts that resides completely outside the spherical core. Some of the inner face parts which look primarily like tall square pillars could also use some hollowing as well.

(By looking at the huge volume of solid plastic in the edge pieces, I can see why Verdes included the pillowing design to cut down on excess plastic.)

Look on the bright side: Reeech paid $3500 for the Petaminx, although I think he broke his wallet in the process. Cubes are a lot more mainstream, and so the market for a ginormous cube of galactic proportions would be a small scale larger than that for dodecahedrons. People invest in things they are familiar with. How many people live in dodecahedral homes? How-a-bouts those working at octahedral workstations??? Of couse not! People work in cubicles....

Why don't we simply start up an Over-the-Top donation fund? It could have a website for people to donate monies via paypal. The totals would be shown how close they are to meeting the goal. I'm sure lots of twistypuzzle members (I am one of them), would be willing to donate 20-30 bucks to the cause. Also, those types of campaigns tend to have a Viral effect on the Internet. The 17x17x17 site could be propagated through digg, twitter, facebook, etc (myspace is in its dying stages by now). The Petaminx went viral and it had little if any real "push" behind it. I think the 17-Cube has the potential to reach greater status than that.

Now, for something really Over-the-Top, let's see someone make a crazzy cube out of it

Oskar always hollows his pieces in his designs. I can only assume the same is true for the 17x17x17.

With such small pieces, enforcing a minimum wall size basically results in no hollowing out whatsoever.

Well not for the edges, but the corners at least have a large volume. Granted, not much compared to the puzzle size.

Reminds me of the days I solved an 11x11x11 on gabbasoft...

Communism in Soviet Russia

What if there is so much friction in this puzzle that it can't move?