Hey friends it's Devin here with Make Anything and I've got a brand new puzzle to share with
you today I think it's super cool and what's more it was born out of a failed print a total
fluke I think it's a pretty fun origin story so I'll talk about that a bit today and if that's
not intriguing enough well what if I told you I've got a bunch of money to give away that's
right I'm making a little competition out of it I've got some big prizes to give away to
the first people to solve my puzzle so I'm going to try not to run on too much in this video cuz
I know you're going to want to get to printing and puzzling as quickly as possible but please
stick around cuz I'm going to share the cool story about its invention as well as some tips
and tricks for solving these puzzles along the way so the story starts just a couple of
weeks ago when I caught a recent video by Steve Mould about auxetic structures Steve makes all
these videos about really cool mathematical and physical principles and stuff like that that he
demonstrates in a very physical way he's got tons of really awesome and inspiring videos I
highly suggest you check out not only the auxetic structure video but basically just go down the
Steve Mould rabbit hole but yeah recently Steve shared this video about auxetic structures which
are basically these meta materials that expand in every direction One such auxetic structure
that Steve shared in his video were these cubes that are connected with duct tape hinges and they
move in a very satisfying way where they all twist together and do in fact expand
in every direction he challenged his viewers to come up with some kind of graphic to put on top
that would shapeshift when you switch between the different phases of the cube and of course
I was immediately inspired to start trying to figure out that problem and me being me well I
also had to come up with a way to 3D print it all so here are a few of my first successful versions
of those auxetic cubes and the main change I had to make in order for this to be printable
was to have these two stacked layers of hinges since they have to overlap when in the closed
position once I figured that out I just had to finesse the design to make sure
I can print this without requiring any support material and by this iteration
I got something that works really nice and smooth straight off of the print bed on its
own it's pretty useless but I got to say it's really fun to fidget with and of course it's
a coaster it's always a coaster here's a big 5x5 version I printed and it just gets more
mesmerizing at this scale to top this off I printed some multicolor panels that snap into
place to tackle Steve Moulds shape-shifting challenge these tiles are really satisfying
to connect and once all of those are in place we're left with this magically transforming
pattern oh yeah I think this speaks for itself so these auxetic structures are super fascinating
super fun to play around with and uh it's something that I'm still exploring like crazy
so there's going to be a future video coming out soon where I share more of my discoveries
and creations based around this idea but as I mentioned the puzzle I'm sharing today was born
out of a failed print basically I was trying to do a filament swap kind of like this except the
printer got snagged on something and I had to stop it halfway through that left me with this
piece that only has half of the hinges which formed a kind of cubey worm rather than just
throwing that out I fiddled with this part a bit and I noticed that it can arrange to form all
sorts of different shapes many of them somewhat non-intuitive and that made me realize this might
be an interesting mechanism for a puzzle this one little failed print is basically what led me to
creating my latest puzzle which I call SKEWBITS like my failed auxetic print these SKEWBITS are
made of cubes connected at the corners by hinges this game uses four Skewbits and each one is
unique in its arrangement of hinges so they each form their own shapes the Skewbits can
be arranged on this grid in hundreds of different ways and each problem consists of an outline like
this the goal is simply to fit the four cubits within the outline but with all the weird ways
these can nest together together it ends up being a fun little challenge I've also designed the
problems to form the silhouettes of all kinds of cute animals and other satisfying shapes
making this game extra delightful now one thing to consider is that the hinges must also fit within
these outlines that's what these little bumps are for and while that greatly limits the number of
possible solutions it also provides some very helpful guidance as far as which Skewbits will
fit in certain spots the only other rules are that you can't flip the problem or the Skewbits so it
might be a good idea to indicate which side is the bottom with a marker or with a filament swap while
printing by default these problems are printed upside down which ensures that they'll still fit
on the grid even if the first layer of your print is a bit squashed I think I struck a good balance
between making these sturdy enough while not using too much material and printing in about 15 to 20
minutes I personally used a filament swap to make the grid stand out a bit more and as you
saw I also added a nice cork backing to help with the grip and just to make
my SKEWBITS grid extra fancy this cork sheet was an awesome thrift store find
and it took less than 4 minutes to cut and engrave on my xTool P2 laser
cutter I then used a matte clear coat to seal the
engraving so it doesn't smudge and then some spray adhesive to stick it onto my
print there's also this TPU version of a grip that
you can print out for the bottom but both of these are entirely
optional all you really need to start puzzling are the four Skewbits the grid and whatever
problems you want to solve and while I won't enforce which colors you should use I will be
releasing a solution guide after the competition is over so it may be more convenient to use the
same colors that I did here as of today today I'm going to be releasing my puzzle on Thangs
you can download it right now by following the link in the description I'm also going to have a
bunch of puzzles available the first 15 problems here are going to be free on Thangs for everyone
to download and print at the very least for the rest of the month and the first person to print
out the game and those 15 puzzles and send me proof of solving all those 15 I'm going to give
away a $300 gift card to either MatterHackers or 3DJake the choice is yours for those of you
who are subscribed to my Thangs membership you'll get the first 25 problems as of today
and whoever solves those 25 first will get a $400 MatterHackers or 3DJake gift card I'll
put all the information in terms of rules and how to submit your proof in the description I'm super
excited I actually don't have any idea how long it's going to take for some of you to solve all
of these problems I know you're a smart bunch out there so maybe it'll be a handful of days
maybe it'll be a week maybe more I doubt it but whether you want to race to be the first or if
you just want to try out SKEWBITS and have fun with this puzzle of mine go ahead check it out
on Thangs a lot of people talk about failing fast and failing often but one thing that maybe goes
under the table(*radar) a bit is to not dismiss those failures but to maybe let them inspire you
and lead to new creations when you're trying to go after something specific you're often
iterating on things that already exist but when there's some kind of total fluke or
mistake like there was in this case it can lead to something more original perhaps I think this
puzzle is pretty original I haven't looked into it too much but I'm having a ton of fun coming up
with all these different problems and playing around with it and sharing it with some of my
family members so far and I'm extremely excited to share it with all of you today all right I
said I wouldn't ramble so I'm done I'm stepping away from this video go ahead start printing and
puzzling the race is on SKEWBITS!