Livecubes

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Louis
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Livecubes

Post by Louis » August 13th, 2011, 1:44 am

In a recent post Guillaume mentioned using a set of livecubes to build puzzles. At MPP3 Richard Gain also mentioned using them for prototyping puzzles.
I bet building puzzles (especially burrs or interlocking cubes) from modular cubes is much easier than cutting them from wood, and re-using the cubes would be a great way to try out many puzzle designs before buying or making them from wood.

So I would like to use livecubes as well, at least a few hundred, to build 6x6x6 cube puzzles or larger ones.
I have been looking at livecubes in the puzzlemaster webshop, but because of the huge overhead of shipping cost and potential customs tax I have not yet dared to order them.
Does anyone know a European shop that sells livecubes?

And then I wonder...
Are the livecubes sticking together strong enough to make a burr or interlocking puzzle work without falling apart?
Are there any other recommendations to consider before buying the livecubes?

Any suggestions are welcome, of course.
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Pio2001
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Re: Livecubes

Post by Pio2001 » August 13th, 2011, 4:37 pm

Hello Louis,
I actually used Livecubes in order to try 18-pieces classical burrs designs before choosing one to have made out of wood.
I got them directly from the Live Cube shop, because they have got more accessories and choice than any other seller : http://www.livecubeshop.com/15cmcubes.html

The Livecube connections are loose enough to be easily assembled by hand, although my first 18 pieces burr left me with sore fingers. Connections seem to loosen with time and repeated manipulation.

However, they are not strong enough in order to play a high level burr without breaking some pieces. To give an idea, with 18 pieces burrs, trying to disassemble the puzzle, I had a broken bit of piece falling on the ground every 10 moves or so.

Rebuilding it is easy as long as the piece has a continuous line of voxels to support it from end to end. "S" shaped pieces are more tricky to rebuild if the broken part is still inside the puzzle, because you can't press on the extremities without causing a sudden side explosion of all other pieces. The pieces around it have to be temporarily broken in order to access the broken part.
It can also be difficult to find where each part must go when several pieces break at once.

I was nonetheless able to find and perform the whole 189 moves of the Tiros puzzle in several hours.
One brillant thing with Livecube is that you can build the pieces directly in the assembled configuration, and start looking for the disassembling sequence without any clue.

The building of the puzzle pieces takes longer than I expected. Tiros is a simple 18 pieces burr, but it uses 308 voxels ! That's more than 308 Livecube connections, carefully choosing the orientation of the joints so that the piece are less likely to break.
It can easily take one hour.

I've got blue, black and white cubes. I found the blue ones connections not as strong as the black or white ones.
I tried to glue together basic skeletons for classical burrs, on which I would have just added some voxels, in order to have less work each time, together with nearly unbreakable pieces.
It didn't work at all ! It seems that the glue had molten a tiny part of the surface, reducing the pieces lenght by a small amount. It was enough for the puzzle to become impossible to assemble. The pieces seemed to fit quite tightly. I could get the last one in. But, as the final sequence was progressing, and pieces were falling into place, the moves were getting more and more difficult, to the the point that some of themwere nearly impossible. A glued joint eventually broke, and a gave up the idea.
I still keep small glued lines of voxels is a separate bag. They help with long fragile pieces.

Don't bother ordering finishing panels. Their thickness prevents high level burrs to work.

On the other hand, don't hesitate to get a set of connection panels. They are stronger than default connections, and help with fragile pieces.

To give an idea, here are some puzzles that I made in livecube :

Foursome
Perfect, works like a charm

SimpleUCTrapped
Works very well. You might break a small piece if you're not careful, but it's not very annoying.

Sharp
Pieces are easily accessible.I could solve the puzzle without breaking any because I was constantly reinforcing them when they moved a bit.

Computer's Choice Unique level 10/
Very intricate pieces. You may break some from time to time.

Tiros
Large thin pieces. Very long sequence. Breaking a lot of pieces is unavoidable. Get used to pick the broken parts and replace them constantly. We can still say that the puzzle works, though.

Xenon
Long sequence, lots of interactions at odd angles between the pieces. Live cube is not suited for that kind of puzzles. Congratulations if you make it work. I gave up.

flawr
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LiveCubes

Post by flawr » August 15th, 2014, 10:40 pm

Not sure if it fits here: I am considering buying a set of livecubes for 'hands on' designing new designs or trying existing ones. Does anyone have experience with those? Is there something particular to look out for? Do you perfer 1.5 or 2cm cubes?
Happy puzzling!

Louis
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Joined: April 17th, 2011, 11:19 pm

LiveCubes

Post by Louis » August 16th, 2014, 9:16 pm

I use the 15mm livecubes for many tryouts, and they work just fine, as long as the puzzle pieces don't become too large. Up to 6 or 8 in a row is fine, I avoid longer parts because they tend to break apart while solving a puzzle. At IPP the 20mm cubes were used and they seem to be fine too, although I only tried small pieces there. Larger designs may become cumbersome to handle with 20m voxels.
I think there is another brand of cubes which can be attached to each other more firmly by a 90degree twist, I don't remember their name though. If I would buy some now, I would choose the type that connects more firmly.

You may also be interested in this topic (and/or moderators may merge these two): <topics now merged>
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Re: Livecubes

Post by bluesign2k » August 18th, 2014, 9:47 am

I picked up some of the 20 mm Livecubes from IPP. They're okay but having made a few shapes with them, including Rich Gain's "Three Easy Pieces" (because I had a copy of Neil's next to me at the time), I've found that its really easy to accidentally un-join pieces. Maybe there's a knack in joining the pieces or maybe I was just expecting more from them (I was kinda expecting them to hold together like two pieces of lego - they don't)?

My feeling is that they may be okay for a quick prototype of a simple(ish) puzzle but I wouldn't consider using them to test a high level burr or any puzzle with many adjacent pieces. If I were going to do this, I'd seriously consider super-gluing the pieces together.

gibell
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Re: Livecubes

Post by gibell » August 18th, 2014, 5:33 pm

I bought some of the metal cubes from Rich Gain at IPP. They are made in Japan, and go together quite tightly. I don't believe they will come apart like the LiveCubes. I haven't tried assembling them into a puzzle, they seem rather complex compared with LiveCubes. You have to use a wrench to get them apart.

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