Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'rubiks cube'.
-
sorry if this sounds a bit dramatic, I was listening to Duel of the Fates while writing this KSP offers a great selection of parts, which makes it possible to create a great variety of creations. While primarily intended for making rockets and spaceplanes, it was discovered (now years ago I believe) that helicopters were possible too. Seeing that free-rotating bearings were possible, I was inspired. Surely a set of bearings could be fashioned such that a working Rubik's Cube could be constructed. Just over a week ago, I designed a bearing to do the job. For those who saw that thread: Yes, this is the reason the thing was stuck on a Rockomax cubic connector. Satisfied with the bearing itself, I set about constructing a cube around it. Starting with the centers: That was the easy part. Next came the edges. I had to align the docking ports on the edges with the docking ports on the centers. Not exceptionally hard: Next up was to add attachment points for the corner pieces, and to build corner pieces to attach. Easy, right? Nope. See those docking ports on the sides of the edges? They're in the center, so they run into each other when turning. It took me a great deal of testing to figure this out, but eventually as I was thinking about it (and playing around with my real Rubik's cubes) I came up with this: Notice how I moved the docking ports as far up the edge as possible. In that configuration, they do not rub against each other after turning 45 degrees like the old one! There was one major constraint from implementing this design, though: It's really damn hard to align the docking ports with centimeter/millimeter precision the way they need to be when they aren't placed right on the center node of the panel! After a great deal of fine-tuning in the VAB, switching between Rotate and Offset and Place modes, turning Angle Snap on and off, making subassemblies, loading individual pieces separately to tweak them, putting them back together, and fine-tuning some more, I managed to get something that was reasonably well aligned. I found that even the minuscule amount of pull in Hacked Gravity mode was too much for the bearings, so I installed Hyperedit and teleported the device into space to test it: It worked pretty well! But that was just the edges; Those only needed to be aligned to two docking ports. The corners needed to be aligned to three. That proved incessantly difficult. Only yesterday was I able to make a corner and edge combination that was aligned reasonably well. I called it the Corner to end all Corners. In testing, it worked extremely well: Next was to make covers for the corners, and attach the "stickers". A few tests later, I had come up with this: Unfortunately, some faces refused to turn. I traced the problem to several instances of this weirdness: Yes, those two pieces are attached to that corner through empty space. It took several tests to completely eradicate the problem, but I was rewarded with a cube that could do this: That's the checkerboard pattern, to prove that all faces can be manipulated. It took nearly an hour of turning to get there, but there you go! I've done it. I've created the first fully functional Rubik's Cube in stock KSP! Feel free to try it out, though beware it is very finicky! I built it in 1.0.5, but it should work just fine in 1.1 as the bearings don't use wheels or landing legs. Rubik's Cube.craft Second iteration here: I suggest using the second version, it is much easier. I have posted a challenge for anyone willing to do a full solve on it!
- 41 replies
-
- 106
-
- stock
- rubiks cube
-
(and 1 more)
Tagged with: