Rotoskewb by Timur

grigr

This puzzle was suggested to me by Werner Schachinger from Austria. He said that I could name it myself and I called it Rotoskewb. It is a Skewb (a little offset) whose faces have circles that may turn with their 6 segments. If you turn it like a normal Skewb, 3 circles rotate by 5/6 turn and 3 others exchange their segments. Of course, hexagon and 2 other parts of the face area always have the same color, being not connected physically.

The mechanism is obviously based of gears. Interesting, I did not have to design the gear layer - I just copied it from the Gear Pyraminx, because it works the same way that is needed for Rotoskewb. If you have a Gear Pyraminx, you can try to apply shift to 3 edge gears around one corner and you'll see how this puzzle works.
Turning is not that easy and smooth because slow movement applied to the outer layer is converted to faster movement of the gears and this lever law does not work in our favour - bigger force is needed.

demo video: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjg1NzY0MDQw.html