Header
Define a Problem
Generate Concepts
I used a dial caliper to take these measurements and then put them into an Excel chart. I measured side to side from end grain to end grain and found the standard deviation. I used this to make sure that all 27 cubes were in acceptable range, which means that they were close enough in size so that when I put the cube together all of the pieces would fit and nothing would stick out.
These are my 20 brainstorming sketches, each piece follows the constraints by not exceeding the length or height of 3 cubes and each piece contains 4-6 cubes. These isometric sketches are all random pieces that I then chose from to form a cube.
Develop a Solution
Build and Test a Prototype
In addition to assembling this part in real life, I assembled it in inventor. I used the mate and flush tools from the ribbon to constrain the parts of the cube so that they did not move. When the mate tool is used, two sides are attached, but the degrees of freedom remain the same. Then you have to flush one exterior side with another, and by doing this you remove a degree of freedom. Then you flush twice more to remove the other two degrees of freedom of those two pieces. I did this until each piece of the cube was fully locked in place.
Evaluate the Solution
As seen in the data, the younger you are, the faster you should be able to solve the cube. Most people solved the cube in about 11 minutes. The fastest time was 3:42 minutes by Luke and he is 14 years old, while the slowest time was 15:22 minutes by my Dad and he is 64 years old. If I did this project again, i would have took some more time to try to make my cube harder, because it is fun to watch people struggle to solve it. I would have also taken my time while putting each block together into each piece because the pieces didn't all fit perfectly together.
Present
The Puzzle Cube project was an overall good experience because I learned how to do some new things with inventor as well as reinforcing things on inventor that I have done before. Using the dial caliper to measure the cubes and using Excel to find calculations and values were only two of the many things that we learned recently that were incorporated into this project.