
Show HN: 4x4x4 Rubik's Cube solving machine - rufus31415
https://ballcuber.github.io
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blopp99
Boy you've been working in this for a while now, the patent was introduced
april 2019

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grace2
What a beautiful and tiny mechanism, but why did you patented it?

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rufus31415
It was for the exercise of filing a patent without the help of a lawyer. I've
always wanted to see how difficult it is. Although this is a novel
manipulation device, I'm not sure if it will ever have an industrial
application, but it's been accepted so it's cool, I'm glad. I don't care about
intellectual property and I wouldn't sue anyone.

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gus_massa
It looks like a nice exercise, but for a real patent you sadly need a real
layer. There are a lot of standard patenting tricks to ensure nobody can make
a stupid generalization of your patent and get a patent that includes your
idea. Does you patent apply to cubes with N layers? Does your patent apply
with cubes painted with less (or more?) colors?

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rufus31415
I worked very hard to get it accepted as is. But it's obvious that if a
professional had written this patent, it would have been more general and
robust. But it's expensive, especially to make it world-wide, and that's not
at all what I want. This patent was a non-technical aside in this project.

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gus_massa
I understand how you rotate slices in the middle, but I do't understand how
you rotate the slices that have the corners.

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rufus31415
Exactly the same way as the middle layers. A motor rotates each outer layers.
On the other hand, the complicated thing to understand is that the cube has 6
outer layers (left, right, front, back, top, bottom). But in this kinematics,
only 3 outer layers move (left, front, top) and the 3 others remain fixed
during the resolution, hence the fact that we see the fixed corner common to
all these 3 fixed layers. If the algorithm calculates that we must move a
fixed layer, the 3 others will move in the other direction. That's why,
although it's a 4x4x4 cube, there are 3 motors per dimension, so 9 motors in
total.

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oblib
This is pure awesomeness.

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perilunar
Very cool!

