Here is my latest puzzle...

The Helicopter Cube

A few vital statistics:
It turns about an edge axis (180 degrees) and has 12 axes of rotation.
It is the same size as a Rubik's cube, but weighs approximately twice as much due to the solid resin parts.
All parts of this puzzle are custom made.
The central spider used in this puzzle was 3D printed (yes it is strong enough)

The movement of this puzzle is very good, and there is no problem with the puzzle coming apart. In fact due to the way the prts interlock, I can remove one of the axis screws and the puzzle will not fall apart.
The puzzle itself is challenging, but not overly difficult, but as has been discussed many times in this Forum, difficulty is very subjective term.

This puzzle is one I have been thinking about for a long time (several months before I found this Forum) and now that I have found a method that works for me, I am able to make my ideas real. There will be many more to come.

Enough chit-chat, on with the pictures!

-Adam

let me be the first to say WOW. That is amazing. i am truely speechless.

Incredible. Great work!
I think this will probably be puzzle of the month.

-d

From-scratch mods such as this one are fundamentally more difficult than build-ups of an existing mechanism. This one is particularly impressive, since the half-chop mechanism is quite subtle and hard to figure out, and Adam figured it out completely independently.

This is absolutely fantastic work. Great Job! I was wondering, for custom puzzles like these, where do you get your stickers? Are they custom cut from a store or website? Cubesmith?

*Stunned*

The movement.... the way the pieces are connected... unbelievable...

Gorgeous Puzzle!




Pantazis

I love this one a lot!!!!! Keep'em coming!!!! Does it also moves like a 2x2x2 cube?

That is seriously cool.

Astonishing Adam!
I can't even get my head round it's movements, never mind the internal mechanism!
What a fantastic work!
BRAVO!
Vadim

WOW!! that is really good. It must be so difficult to make .
when I saw the first pic I thought to myself, that looks like a skewb and a
2x2 combined but I was wrong. Again good work.

I thought that your last one was unbeatable. Now, just before watching this one, I just want to wake up from my dream. Holy cow man, that's one of the nicest puzzle I have ever seen, if not the most one. Oh my god, I have no way to describe how amazing it is.

Man, please, don't stop building those awesome puzzles. I hope that I ever can get one of those jewells!

Thank you very much for sharing it!

Unbelievable!

Simply amazing! Let us know if you plan on selling.

Well done sir!

That puzzle right there is a tough one.

AWESOME!!!!

That's really a "must have"

Your previous design was already genious, but this is of course topping!!

When will we see it on ebay?

Cheers - Frank

I like too much this puzzle

the puzzle of the year..

Adam,
Great job!! It looks great! I had not thought that an edge turning cube would be all that stable. Nice to know I was wrong. You have really gotten good at this! Congratulations!!
Lee

Seriously, you should contact Irwin Toys. Sexualrubiks said they were looking for other designs. Since these are originals, you don't have to worry about licensing designs from companies whose assets may have gotten transferred a million times.

Hopefully you could get a nice royalty.

When i first saw the puzzle, i thought you had made a Skewb / 2x2 super-x puzzle.

Same for me. I wonder if it could be done.

Wow. Just brilliant! Well done.

very nice

Hello Adam,

I was very surprised to read this article.

I had already completed the same puzzles as your puzzle last month.
And I had sold them to few puzzle friends in Japan.

I had not disclosed information for certain reasons.
However, I updated my site and opened my Bevel Cube to the public ahead.
I named this puzzle "Bevel Cube".
http://puzzle3d.hp.infoseek.co.jp/index.html
http://puzzle3d.hp.infoseek.co.jp/bevelcube.html

However, my Bevel Cube may not be the same as your Helicopter Cube.
It is because my Bevel Cube can be transformed.

Katsuhiko Okamoto

That is unbelievable coinsedence!
I'm pretty sure it's the same puzzle they both invented at the same time (or thereabouts!)!
Vadim

Apparently this is the year of this puzzle. I started working on actually getting it made, and no less than two people have beat me to it!

Katsuhiko, I've spent many hours staring at the mechanism for this puzzle, and never once noticed that it tends to accidentally do that shape transformation thing. I might have gotten all the way through making a prototype and only noticed it on the physical device! It certainly makes the puzzle quite a bit more difficult and fascinating.

For those not in the know, the mechanism for this puzzle is basically this -

http://www.geocities.com/jaapsch/puzzle ... 4&blue=229

And here I was racking my brain wondering if that battle gear concept might apply to anything else...

First of all, thank you for all the praise for this design. I really enjoyed making it, and I learned a lot in the process. The puzzle also can get "jumbled" like Katshiko's making it much more difficult to solve.

I will be auctioning off a Helicopter Cube this week, once I complete it. It will be signed and in a custom box. I will post an announcement on the Marketplace early in the week.

This puzzle (Helicopter Cube/Half Chop/Bevel Cube) is a very logical new puzzle to make because face and corner turning cubes already exist. When I did some research on this puzle, I only found a couple of mentions of this puzzle, and they were only in "ideas for future puzzles" posts. This surprised me because it seemed like a relatively simple puzzle design. I know now that this puzzle was independently under development by several people at once. I guess it was just this puzzle's "time" and I am glad to see Katshuiko's Bevel Cube. It shows again what an amazing puzzle builder he is.

I thought of this puzzle as a result of analyzing another puzzle design that I have; a truly unique puzzle, and probably one that has not been thought up before.


Adam

Adam, most of the early mentions of this puzzle say they think it would require an extremely complicated mechanism, and I've tried to explain the mechanism to a few people and met with general confusion, so my suspicion is that this mechanism, while simple, is extremely difficult to grok without a talent for such things and a decent piece of CAD software, which is probably why all of a sudden several people have made progress on it - CAD software is becoming a lot more widespread.

In the old thread on the tuttminx there was some discussion of the great rhombicuboctahedron and the great rhombicosidodecahedron without anybody realizing that they're jumbleable.

It's been a matter of gospel for a while that the only symmetry groups in 3-space which are useful for twisty puzzles are the ones which are symmetric about each point, so that there are multiple positions for each slice. But now that I've been introduced to this jumpling concept, I realize that that isn't the case at all! In fact, the humble square antiprism can make a perfectly good twisty puzzle which can easily be scrambled by jumbling. D'oh! Now I need to go revisit all the archimedean solids, plus the prisms and antiprisms, to see what might be useful. Too bad Jaap's applet doesn't support them. My suspicion is that the square antiprism will be the big winner in the end, because in general simpler is better.

I grok, puzzle brother.

One of my projects is to release some "open source" puzzles that include the CAD files for anyone to use or change. These designs would be set up to use 3D printed masters and cast parts, as that is a relatively simple path to a completed puzzle. I will probably start with something simple like a 2x3x3 or 2x2x3, but there are many possibilities. The format will be Alibre Design Express because that program is free and easy to learn and use.

To get "jumbled" as you say, do you turn the "helicopter blade" only 45 degrees and then turn an adjacent "blade"? If not, could someone help me visualize how it is shape changing?

Does anyone else see the resemblance of a 2x2 and a skewb that had puzzle babies here?

Hahah. Puzzle fornication.




None the less, it's amazing. Nothing that hasn't been said already.

Here is a very oversimplified picture of what is happening inside the puzzle.

In the first picture there is a view of one corner (red) and the surrounding face pieces (green).

In the second picture, one edge (the right circle) is partially rotated, allowing the upper left circle to rotate.

This general pattern is repeated and the puzzle ends up scrambled in a very disorienting and difficult to solve state.

I *think* I have a bit of a handle on the possibilities for jumbleable puzzles.

The formula for the most promising ones is to take the regular solids which consist just of squares and triangles and cut big diagonals on the squares, making them into four triangles. The result is a jumbleable puzzle. It's kinda hard to visualize these things though. The possible shapes are -

triangular prism

square antiprism

cuboctahedron (this puzzle, both sliceable and jumbleable)

small rhombicuboctahedron

snub cube

Having a complete collection of all of those would be quite something.

One more comment, and I'm done for the day, really

The ones I just gave aren't exactly all in the same family - the cuboctahedron rotates edge-centered, while the others are corner centered. Another one which *might* work is to take the truncated tetrahedron and split the hexagons into six triangles each, and have rotations around the edges which are shared between hexagons. Yet another one is to take the truncated octahedron and split the hexagons into six triangles and the squares into four triangles. Both of those might fail completely though, I have a lot of trouble visualizing them. They certainly are both sliceable.

[Uh, never mind, I realized after posting it that these suggestions are totally busted]

Vall me crazy but don't those puzzles allready exist right now?!?!?!?!?!

First link is a Tetraminx

http://twistypuzzles.com/cgi-bin/puzzle.cgi?pid=548

Second link is a Christoph's Magic Jewel

http://twistypuzzles.com/cgi-bin/puzzle.cgi?pid=641

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Watch Out! Cover yourselves! Helicopters everywhere!!!


On a serious note, it is simply amazing to have two puzzle designers making this puzzle at the same time (and one having the idea of it too). It just shows the talent of the people in this forum. And I am not praising anyone here, I am just stating a fact!




Pantazis

Uh, yeah, I edited the comment to say that I was totally wrong on those. The ones described in the prior comment appear to work though.

The Elongated Square Gyrobicupola can be jumbleified in almost exactly the same way the small rhombicuboctahedron can.

These puzzles are amazing!

that is sweet! I have never seen anythign like that... I could never even get it back into a cube shape much less solve it :p

it's beautiful

Oh! It's edge-centered! I have been dreaming of this puzzle... I applaud you for having finally created it! It looks magnificent!

Are you going to produce more units of this puzzle?

What's next?

Thursday, 2/15, I will be starting a 10 day auction for one of my Helicopter Cubes. The puzzle will be signed and in a custom box shown in the pictures above.

The puzzle is now listed:

Helicopter Cube Auction


Happy Bidding,
Adam

How easy or hard is it to tell where you turn it at when it is not in cube form?

You can see the heads of the screws on the 12 axes when you look between the pieces of the puzzle. It is not hard to tell.

Can it turn like a 2x2?

No.

This puzzle "looks" like a 2x2x2 and Skewb hybrid, but only the 12 edge centered axes turn.

Here is a fun picture of the parts prior to assembly.


Enjoy!
Adam

WHOA! That's beautiful. Can we get a bigger picture of that?

Have you considered making a 5x5x5-like version? It would look like a 4x4x4 on each side, and have two axes of rotation on each of the axes. That would be pretty crazy as well.

A simpler variation might be a puzzle where each axis turn turns half of the cube. It would look just like a Dino Cube, but be a lot harder to create, since each turn would turn 12 pieces...

Isn't that like his SuperX? http://twistypuzzles.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5948&highlight=