One of the great benefits of living in Northern California is being close to many puzzle builders. Aleh lives on my way to the TechShop and I visit fairly frequently. As such I get a sneak peek into many of his projects before they are complete. Aleh doesn't like to show work publicly before it is complete, so it can often be a bit frustrating not being able to share what I've seen. For example I saw the Starminx a month ago but have kept quiet about it...

Makes one wonder: What wonders of his exist that have not seen the light of day? I know of a few but certainly not all.

Just the other day he showed me one he had made a few years back but never considered good enough to be complete. He loaned it to me to take some pictures and share. It is a 57mm little chop:



Like the 24 cube, it does jumble:


Part of why he hasn't shared it sooner is that it has the tendency to come apart if it is not turned carefully. This is because the core is a very powerful rare earth magnetic sphere, with each piece containing a metal bearing to stick to the core:


He tried with a steel core and magnetic pieces, but the problem with that is with so many magnets close to each other (24 around a small sphere) their polarities oppose each other and you get pieces popping out.

The other part of keeping it unannounced is that the strong magentic core works, but is DANGEROUS. This puzzle will kill your credit cards, cell phone, magnetic media, etc. Don't bring it near other magnets and careful around large metal objects! When I put it in my trunk, it stuck because of the metal of the car. Just having it at the counter near the TechShop monitor (CRT, not flat screen) was causing major distortion. I am kind of scared having it around my office...

For a name I suggest "Tanto", the Tanto being a small Japanese sword, a very dangerous "little" chop indeed (although it is more of a stabbing weapon...). I considered Shasqua, a Cossack sword, but that seems a bit long for a "little" chop. Certain one sided axes were appealing as well: Hatchet, Adze and Tomahawk could all be considered very dangerous little chops. I am sure Aleh will choose a name he likes

So why show it now? With the recent interest in magentic mechanisms, particularly for deep cut puzzles, he thought it seemed relevant.

Enjoy

Dave

P.S. Videos to come

Nice. So is it identical to a 24-cube in everything but mechanism?

I see that I wasn't the first one to come up with this idea!

I do think that my approach (many small magnets) is safer than Aleh's (one massive magnet).

Videos!
Puzzle demonstration
Pulled by my Allen wrench
More magnetic fun
Even more magentic fun

samishxcpuzzler: Yep, the 24 is also a little chop (Bram's name?) puzzle.

Taylor: Simple, but dangerous. A puzzle to be turned and handled carefully.

Garrett: How do you avoid the polarity problem of adjacent pieces disturbing each other? (Perhaps better to take this side discussion to the Puzzle Building forum...)

Dave

The magnets would be magnetized axially, so each one wouldn't affect an adjacent one. Opposite magnets would have opposite polarities.

It should work in theory.

I believe it didn't work in practice but Aleh can clarify. I believe unless you have a large radius core the axial magnets are too close to each other side by side want to "flip" around to meet each other. If they are strong enough to hold to the core well (which they need to be), they are strong enough to want to meet each other too. Try taking two strong magnets and place them next to each other, and see if they care how you orient them before they flip around and pinch your fingers...

Dave

I wonder the effects on the iron in your blood when playing with this magnetic ball o' death.

Only if you don't solve it under the time limit

Amazing job Aleh (Again!) at creating a 25 piece 24-cube! It's truly impossible for the mechanism to get any simpler than this!

Using Jason Smith's (io) knucklhead method you could reduce it to 24 (see here and here).

Dave

Except for the fact that it will blow up your computors, and stick to your teeth if you have braces, and essencially kill you if you have a metal body implant. EDIT: this does not mean that I do not like it, it means I think it is impractical to have such a puzzle. I'd prefer the customary Little Chop to this one, because this one has some 'rules' you need to follow for it to work, i.e. keep away from computor, don't put in refrigerator, don't let cat eat, etc. etc. Still, I guess this is a start. Maybe someone will eventually find a substance that deletes a magnetic field? I dunno, but until this thing gets less 'radioactive', it's not at the very top of my 'to do' list. Also, did the 'Magic 8' puzzle (a magnetic 2x2x2 cube) have the same properties of magnetism? or is the core magnet weaker?

Jumble it! Jumble it!!!




LOL it almost behaves like a pet here.




Magnetic Bowling?




Now this is why you should go for a walk at the beach with that device.
I am sure you will find many lost coins and jewelery!


All in all, it is a brilliant demo of the strong (literally!) impact of magnets to puzzling.
If many great builders (Tony, Aleh, etc) use magnets, that is a hint to the rest of us.

And Dave... I tried calling you just now... something wrong with your mobile phone???




Pantazis

this looks AWESOME nice job

can this turn like a dino cube also?

I don't think the angles of the cuts allow for this movement. Is that accurate, Dave?

- Billy

The little chop is a deep cut edge turning puzzle, not corner turning like the Dino. The interior shapes of the pieces would prevent corner turning movement, although the magnetic mechanism would allow it with different interior piece shapes.

Pantazis: I did jumble it a bit. Nice try about the phone, but I was very careful to keep this away from my new toy (32gb iPhone)

Dave

Juggle that puzzle with neocubes!

couldn't you make it with a slightly less strong and smaller core, so that the magnetic field would not go much past the outside of the pieces?
Or it could be made with the pieces magnetic, but where the actual magnet itself never came in contact with any others, you could put a large amount of plastic around to prevent the magnets from interacting with eachother.
Amazing though! I really love it, and was not expecting such a thing for a few more months.

If it were that weak it would barely hold together. As it is it will come apart if misaligned.
If they are going to be strong enough to hold to the core, they will affect each other. 24 points around a center can only be so far apart. The Nichol's cube had only eight points, which naturally spaces them out quite a bit more for the same radius. The only way to get them far from each other is to increase the radius, which is being looked into, but the size of the puzzle can reasonably only be so big. And large metal spheres and strong magnets are heavy.

Dave

It's funny how such a simple idea can have so many complications!
I guess puzzles and life are just that way though.

The solution for this to work is to use the same principals as used by Aleh but fine-tune them a bit! A magnetic sphere should be used as core and the pieces should contain metal (without polarity) as Aleh has done! The thing that you have to "tune" is change the size of the magnetic core to a smaller sphere, but be sure to get the strongest one possible:

ex. a 19mm N38. If he for example used a standard 26mm N38 (it's a bit larger but this is just an example). The difference between these is that the 19mm N38 has about 80% of the pulling power of the 26mm one but only about 38% of the weight + it's smaller in physical size. Therefore the magnetic field will be smaller around the puzzle but the pulling force at the core won't be much smaller. As fore the pieces, they should be made up of much more metal (at least near the core/magnet), the metal should be very "soft" and low in carbon; steel ST37. I'd suggest that the contact surface of the piece that touches the magnet should be all metal. Since the magnetism is exponentially reduced as you move away from the magnetic source it is very important that the metal piece is placed as close to the core as possible. And metal on metal will also result in very low friction (and possibly a very cool metal sound when you twist the puzzle;) ).

Sorry if I messed up the terminology. Eng is my 3:rd language so.

-Emil

Sounds good, but if you get a super strong magnet like that, you would have to be certain the magnetic field didn't go past the outer edges of the pieces, or that could be a much worse "cube-of-death" than the current one.

Couldn't you try to use small horseshoe arrangements or toroidal magnets (magnetized so that when complete, there are no flux lines exiting the core) with sections cut out of them. This should remove the problem of the pieces repelling each other. I think that the magnetic center with metal bits in the pieces that revolve around it is the best solution though. I think you could make the core rather small and have the metal pieces close together so that it helps contain the magnetic flux. Since the pieces are transferring a lot of the field between each other, they would sort of hold themselves together so you could use a slightly weaker magnet reducing the overall field outside of the puzzle.

Sorry for the bump. Someone on YouTube asked the difference between the Half Chop and Little Chop which made me realize I misidentified this as a Half Chop (which is a Helicopter or Bevel Cube). This is truly the Little Chop so I have changed the text where I could to reduce confusion.

Dave

P.S. I realize now Taylor called it the correct name above, but I didn't catch my mistake.

Magnetic mechanism is so powerful that it can build most of the rotational puzzles.
However, due to its instability(inverse square law?), it is probably better to be combined with a solid mechanism.

cool puzzle

Finally stickered!





Dave

That looks so cute. I love to buy one.

Oh wow! It looks so well-made, it actually look sbetter than factory-made
Can we get a video of movement?

See the fifth post of this thread. Not stickered, but it moves the same.

Dave

oh, right, it's been so long that I forgot about that.

can this be turned like the dino since it uses a magnet?

no it cant be turned like a dino. look at the internal structure of the pieces.

Forgive me if this has already been answered...but how heavy is this thing with that kind of core?