I must confess that I've already calmed down to finally see it working, do you? Sorry for a long wait.
There are some black parts, it's just for test of solid dyeing in replacement of stickering which is not quite suitable for small facelets.
Some background info
Someday in April this year when I was wandering in a local bookstore, an impressive puzzle caught my eyes firmly. It's a cube with hundreds of facelets, V7.
How did they make it? Filled up with wonders, I did a lot of searches when I was back in home. Finally, the patent of Mr. Verdes came into my sight. Can you imagine the feeling when I saw the file? Incredible! So much appreciations go to Mr. Verdes!
mf8 & TP are essentially two major forums when I was searching for related key words. With the information therein, I was able to catch a glimpse of the latest technologies behind those big assemblies as well as flushes of inspiring thoughts and comments. They simply became my daily readings, which finally led me to the 12x12x12 project.
The whole project starts from the well-known 'hidden layer' which I thought was unnecessary. Although I'm not explaining the detailed strategy to achieve a new mechanism(as most designers do), it is true that careful investigations of Mr. Verdes' file along with some other patent files were carried out. Huge thanks to Mr. Verdes as well as his excellent designs.
Another goal of this project is to explore the area of extra-high order cubes, esp popping & alignment issues. By 'extra-high order' I mean when layers increase above 10. Every intermediate rotational layer will contain more than 30 parts. If a small gap is allowed for each part, then there's a possibility that there can be a gap of 30 times larger than normal when the layer is squeezed in one direction.
The kick off decision was made by the fact that I saw very few attemps to make normal cubes of higher order in both of the forums. I didn't know why since there were so many odd shapes being tried out.
It has been more than 6 months since this 12th cube was designed. Although I prefer theoretical investigations, I felt it necessary to make it real. Well, "have to be made".
This version is just for test, not for sell. It works properly though a bit tight.
A better version is in progress, but it's much harder to make(MU-59, you can see some part of it in half transparent color in the third picture). I'll make some of them available to serious collectors.
Currently the mechanism won't see the day of light unless the patent file is granted. But I'm considering cancelling the application. Laws as you know, seems always broken anywhere in the world. However, I'll keep it available to serious requests.
If someone wants it really badly, just give me your preferred size together with a generous offer. The number of layers practically available is ranged between 6~20.
@sokoban
In my consideration, TP is more oriented at puzzle making. I think cube lovers like you won't miss that info in any case, right?
Leslie
看样他对参赛没兴趣,还会出新版
Well Billy... I mean making a working cube of more than 20 layers can be very costy(perhaps tens of thousands of dollars as well as a huge amount of labor) which is impractical.