The Quasar Puzzle

An original twisty puzzle design of mine, based off of a building-block prototype that my friends and I threw together on a rainy day at our middle-school's Rubik's Cube Club. Later, when I saw how even the "non-cubers" at my school enjoyed interacting with and manipulating what we had made, I decided to take it upon myself to build a version that didn't fall apart in their hands, one that was fun and functional. I built prototypes out of wood, clay, legos, and anything else I could find. I tried my hand in resin casting and mold making, all the while attempting to perfect the mechanism. Now here I am, in July, four months later, with what I believe to be the final iteration of the Quasar Puzzle. I learned a lot about Solidworks while working on this project. In the end, after dozens of different designs that looked better on paper than the real world, I came up with a facepalm-ingly simple design, that uses 6x 3/4" 6-32 Machine Screws and 6x 6-32 Hex Nuts to connect 8 identical 3D Printed parts into a simple puzzle. The finished product is wonderful, and I am proud to call this my first original puzzle design.