Hi everyone!

Here is a combination of two of my favorite puzzles : the Ghost Cube and the Gear Cube !
I know the Gear Cube has already been made in a lot of variants, but I thought this one was worth it.

I had the idea of the Ghost Gear Cube months ago, but designing spherical gears was a complete mystery for me at that time. Thanks to Timur Evbatyrov for his precious pdf "Designing geared 3D twisty puzzles" through which I could learn anything I needed to achieve my design.

While designing this one I also experimented an Axis and a Fisher version of the Gear Cube, their face patterns are very nice. If some of you are interested to get those other variants, I could go back to work and print them.

The size of the Ghost Gear Cube is the same than the Gear Cube and the Ghost Cube : 60 mm to an edge.

You can see the video here.
And find it in the marketplace.

That is soo cool!

Excellent idea, that is totally mad!

Wow, awesome gear puzzle.
I could imagine these metallised, they'd look gorgeous in any color.

Wow, it looks absolutely amazing! I can tell you've put a lot of work in making sure the stickers are spot on, and it really makes it a piece of art to look at. I think it must be quite difficult to solve though! Has there arisen any type of parity that is not present in the regular gear cube?

Incredible! The idea of designing this never crossed my mind.

It must have taken you longer to sticker the puzzle than anything else Nice puzzle!

If there was ever a puzzle crying out for mass production...

About time this was made! Excellent work!

If you do decide to sell this later, please include the Ultimate parts for those of us who yearn for extra challenge

Thanks to everyone for your comments, I'm really glad you like this puzzle, I spent so much time on it!

1NSAN3 wrote:Wow, it looks absolutely amazing! I can tell you've put a lot of work in making sure the stickers are spot on, and it really makes it a piece of art to look at. I think it must be quite difficult to solve though! Has there arisen any type of parity that is not present in the regular gear cube?

I have to admit that the stickers template took me a good amount of time, but I think I spent more time to learn how spherical gears works and adapt the described method to the software I use.
From a solving point of view, the Gear Cube is not a very difficult puzzle, but of course, this version adds an amount of challenge About the parity, basically a ghost version of a puzzle is similar to a super stickered version of it, where any color information is replaced by shape information. But there is a little difference in this design, one gear is exactly at the center of its face, so its orientation remains unknown.

Proxy-Pie wrote:About time this was made! Excellent work!
If you do decide to sell this later, please include the Ultimate parts for those of us who yearn for extra challenge

I have one last puzzle to present before, but yes it will be for sale soon. About the ultimate parts, that's a good idea, I'll wait to see if someone ask me for them, it will make this puzzle insanely hard

Tony Fisher wrote:If there was ever a puzzle crying out for mass production...

Thank you Tony, I love this sentence

SunWinder wrote:Wow, awesome gear puzzle.
I could imagine these metallised, they'd look gorgeous in any color.

Okay, okay, let's dream a little bit... I just made some renders of hypothetical metallised versions!

WANT

This needs to be mass produced. Great work as always, congrats!

Wow, those metalised versions look amazing. I wonder though how well metalisation would stand up to the wear of gears? Based on regular metalised puzzles I fear it would wear away very quickly. Metalised or not I think this is my favourite puzzle for some time.

leRAFs wrote: I have one last puzzle to present before, but yes it will be for sale soon. About the ultimate parts, that's a good idea, I'll wait to see if someone ask me for them, it will make this puzzle insanely hard

I'd like some on my copy (or copies)

I (and others, I'm sure) have thought about making this puzzle, but could never handle the inevitable complexities. Whatever I would've made wouldn't look or turn this good. I'd love to have it and other variations on my shelf!

Absolutely marvellous, Raphaël. Beautiful, original, excellent design... I also love how your 3D-printed puzzles turn, you put a lot of effort on it. Congratulations on such another piece.

Tony Fisher wrote:If there was ever a puzzle crying out for mass production...

I couldn't agree more! It looks absolutely amazing!

And those metalized ones. Especially the Green one is beyond compare!

Very well done!

Greetz,
Quuador

leRAFs wrote:

SunWinder wrote:Wow, awesome gear puzzle.
I could imagine these metallised, they'd look gorgeous in any color.

Okay, okay, let's dream a little bit... I just made some renders of hypothetical metallised versions!

Absolutely gorgeous

leRAFs wrote:

Tony Fisher wrote:If there was ever a puzzle crying out for mass production...

Thank you Tony, I love this sentence

I think mass produced it would sell really well, and with a possible alternative range of metallised versions too I think many collectors like myself would buy them all......... (and probably a few more)

Thanks again for all these nice comments, it's a pleasure to read them

Proxy-Pie wrote:I (and others, I'm sure) have thought about making this puzzle, but could never handle the inevitable complexities. Whatever I would've made wouldn't look or turn this good. I'd love to have it and other variations on my shelf!

I'm sure you underestimate yourself. I started to design twisty puzzles without knowledge about cad software or any engineer formation, trial and errors are the only way and perseverance is the key. You seems to have great ideas, so make them real before I do

Proxy-Pie wrote: I'd like some on my copy (or copies)

Ok, you convinced me, I'm working on the Ultimate edges, the puzzle will be available in both versions and with additional edges as an option.

This might be a new chapter for Gear mechanism. Good job!

this is wonderful, and i'd love to get a copy. i'd also love to get a copy of the Ultimate/Extreme version. (or a Penultimate version, or an Antepenultimate version, or a scary 'Even Less Gears' version, or any other version. i love your designs, plus i'm always on the lookout for new additions to my Ghost Army.)

i know the number of unique pieces would make this expensive to mass produce, but with regular and Ultimate/Extreme versions in black, white, and blue, plus metallised versions, and possibly a translucent 'ice' version (because those always look cool), maybe Calvin would consider it.

Absolutely fantastic! The best lookign new puzzle I've sen for quite some time. I agree this would be a great candidate for mass production, i really hope it happens!

I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but the more the number of unique pièces, the more mold you need to make, so the chances of this being mass produced are second to none

Nevertheless, let me tell you what I feel in a more concise manner:

WOOOOW

Yep, it's pretty damn beautiful

Boy this sure is a cool puzzle. And those metalized renders!

Grégoire Pfennig wrote:I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but the more the number of unique pièces, the more mold you need to make, so the chances of this being mass produced are second to none

Yes, that is very true, costs would go sky-rocket.

But since a mold has a life-limit (in terms of pieces), imagine how many more copies can be produced
by its unique molds! (that is, compared to the fraction of complete puzzle copies which use a single mold)

Excellent idea, excellent looks, excellent puzzle.




Pantazis

leRAFs wrote: While designing this one I also experimented an Axis and a Fisher version of the Gear Cube, their face patterns are very nice. If some of you are interested to get those other variants, I could go back to work and print them.

I'd love to see them, but just in renders would be great.

Speaking of renders, those metallic ghost gear cubes are some of the most stunning puzzle renders I can recall seeing. Can you share the process and programs you used?

Grégoire Pfennig wrote:I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but the more the number of unique pièces, the more mold you need to make, so the chances of this being mass produced are second to none

That was my first thought as well, but it might not be so unreasonable.

Just a real quick estimation (not including screws springs washers and core) is 40 unique pieces for the ghost gear cube (+4 for an ultimate version).

If you include the side caps, the regular ghost cube had 47 unique pieces.

Dumb noob question, what is "ultimate"?

Also, this puzzle makes me want to look into getting gear cubes. Very cool looking!

thejoekman wrote:Dumb noob question, what is "ultimate"?

Also, this puzzle makes me want to look into getting gear cubes. Very cool looking!

Not a noob question at all. Its a fairly niche variant. In fact unless I am mistaken, it looks like the museum entry for this is incorrect in showing the gear cube ultimate listed as the extreme.

Anyway, here is how I understand it...

Standard gear cube has gears at each edge piece.

Gear cube extreme and gear cube ultimate have 4 edges (say those on the equatorial layer) that omit the gears and behave as standard edges. This essentially unchains the geared pieces and lets them get out of sync from how a standard gear cube behaves, and makes the puzzle more difficult.

The difference between the extreme and ultimate is simply the stickering. Extreme has the stickers omitted on the inner edge faces (matching the stickering Mefferts used on their standard gear cube). Ultimate has these faces stickered making orientation matter.

On the ghost gear cube, reverting the 4 edges back to gearless would make it an ultimate even without stickers since it would still have a unique shape and orientation.

Awesome and so beautiful...
With Greg, we have a fantastic french team here!!

Wow, once again, thank you all for your comments, I'm so glad to see this enthusiasm

NiftyTwisty wrote:I'd love to see them, but just in renders would be great.

Speaking of renders, those metallic ghost gear cubes are some of the most stunning puzzle renders I can recall seeing. Can you share the process and programs you used?

I'm not at home for a few days, but yes I will make some renders of the Axis and Fisher Gear Cube when I come back.

I use Autodesk Fusion 360, I applied a coloured anodised aluminium material on the puzzle, made some adjustments on lighting and launched the rendering. Fusion 360 is really good at making beautiful renders.

Finally! I've been wanting this puzzle for a long time. It's even more beautiful than I imagined!

NiftyTwisty wrote:

thejoekman wrote:Dumb noob question, what is "ultimate"?

Also, this puzzle makes me want to look into getting gear cubes. Very cool looking!

Not a noob question at all. Its a fairly niche variant. In fact unless I am mistaken, it looks like the museum entry for this is incorrect in showing the gear cube ultimate listed as the extreme.

Anyway, here is how I understand it...

Standard gear cube has gears at each edge piece.

Gear cube extreme and gear cube ultimate have 4 edges (say those on the equatorial layer) that omit the gears and behave as standard edges. This essentially unchains the geared pieces and lets them get out of sync from how a standard gear cube behaves, and makes the puzzle more difficult.

The difference between the extreme and ultimate is simply the stickering. Extreme has the stickers omitted on the inner edge faces (matching the stickering Mefferts used on their standard gear cube). Ultimate has these faces stickered making orientation matter.

On the ghost gear cube, reverting the 4 edges back to gearless would make it an ultimate even without stickers since it would still have a unique shape and orientation.

Goootcha. Ya, I heard the "extreme" title but hadn't heard "ultimate" before. Thanks!

kastellorizo wrote:

Grégoire Pfennig wrote:I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but the more the number of unique pièces, the more mold you need to make, so the chances of this being mass produced are second to none

Yes, that is very true, costs would go sky-rocket.

But since a mold has a life-limit (in terms of pieces), imagine how many more copies can be produced
by its unique molds! (that is, compared to the fraction of complete puzzle copies which use a single mold)

Excellent idea, excellent looks, excellent puzzle.




Pantazis

I see this reason often, but you can buy a Ghost Cube for as little as $12 USD and a Mirror Cube for $2 USD!!!!

Demon4511 wrote: I see this reason often, but you can buy a Ghost Cube for as little as $12 USD and a Mirror Cube for $2 USD!!!!

Greg's point spoke to mainly the initial cost of creating the initial molds.

If you have a lot of unique piece shapes then it's not like you need to replace the molds more often than a puzzle with less piece types, since what matters is the total number of pieces, not the types when you consider each mold individually.

So the initial investment is higher for a puzzle with a lot of unique piece types.

On the other hand I think I would be more optimistic about someone mass producing this: The sales potential for gear puzzles is pretty obvious. When you have companies making knock-offs of geared mixups, you know there is a market for them!
This puzzle might be more expensive an investment than say, the Redi-cube or the ivy cube, but the sales potential could be high enough to justify it.

Gearless edges are done! I made a couple of renders of the Ultimate version:



Also, the puzzle is now available for pre-orders until August 6th in the marketplace.

Complexity at it's peak. How one even attempts to allign anything with so many pieces to choose from? Especially the smaller pieces around the edge gears.

I would prefer some stickering sheme that would imply orientation of the faces to make thing a bit easier but single tone is always elegant and intimidating.

Those renders look like the real thing! I'll keep my eye out for the purchase thread. I'm interested in seeing how much Ultimate solution will hold up

I can't say if they will be available, but here are the renders of the Fisher and Axis versions of the Gear Cube.

Fisher Gear Cube:


Axis Gear Cube:

Why can't I be made of money?

thejoekman wrote:Why can't I be made of money?

because if you went out at night, someone would probably steal you.

crypticat wrote:

thejoekman wrote:Why can't I be made of money?

because if you went out at night, someone would probably steal you.

There you go speaking logic =P

The axis looks absolutly amazing

These are all amazing designs, and a step ahead in the gear world, which has been fullfilled with uninteresting puzzles for too long now.
Congratulations, mate.

In time for Halloween, here is a demonstration and solve of Raphael's brilliant Ghost Gear Cube.
Folks, you have to get yourself one of these! It is among the most smooth moving puzzles I have, and a great challenge.

Raphael is proving to be quite the international treasure, and this is one of my favorite puzzles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs3aZEFak_s