Jan 15, 2016 | By Kira

The 3D printing puzzle-master over at CorenPuzzle is the absolute embodiment of the age-old proverb: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.” You see, several months ago, he attempted to create the world’s largest 3D printed Rubik’s Cube, only to see it crumble before his very eyes. His second attempt to assemble a 3D printed 22 x 22 Rubik’s Cube also ended in absolute disaster: after a 90 minute livestream, his 1000+ piece creation practically exploded in his hands.

The cringe-worthy Before and After of CorenPuzzle's previous attempt at asembling the world's largest 3D printed Rubik's cube

An experience like that would be enough to make me swear off Rubik’s cubes forever—but not so for Coren. Instead, he got right back to work, and after eight months spent redesigning a stronger-than-ever core and 3D printing thousands of tiny functional pieces, he seems to have finally done it: Introducing the world’s largest functional 3D printed Rubik’s cube that won’t completely fall apart.

Consisting of 2,691 working parts, with 484 individual colored squares on each face, and a total edge length of 200mm, the 3D printed Rubik’s cube has a mindblowing 4.3 x 10^1795 possible scrambles. “Your job is to find the single solved position,” said the un-phased maker.

Remarkably, the entire project was 3D printed on a low-end consumer 3D printer, the RepRap Prusa i3. “I feel this puzzle is a good demonstration of how far consumer 3D printing has come in the past few years. Even if I factor in the cost of the 3D printer, this puzzle was still easily three times cheaper than smaller puzzles which were printed professionally. Though I must admit, the turning quality does suffer significantly,” he said. “Despite that, I couldn’t be happier with the results.”

To demonstrate its functionality, the creator re-arranged each face into a pleasing checkerboard pattern, a process he was able to do in just three hours, without fear of it crumbling to pieces. As with his previous attempts, this 3D printed Rubik’s cube was based off of Oskar van Deventer’s floating anchors, but instead of using conical cuts, he used cylindrical cuts.

If you’ve got the patience and mental will-power, the entire 22 x 22 3D printed Rubik’s cube can be yours. CorenPuzzle has made the 3D printable files available to download for free via Thingiverse. Just keep in mind you’ll need eight months to 3D print the parts, and who knows how long to solve it. (Unless you happen to be a speedcuber. A slighty smaller but still insanely large 3D printed Rubik’s cube was previously solved in just seven hours!)

Not much is known about the maker behind CorenPuzzle, other than that he’s a certified master of all things Rubik’s cube-related, however what we can say for sure is that he is one of the most dedicated, unrelenting, tenacious puzzle makers we have ever seen, and we could all learn a lesson in perseverance from his remarkable journey...not to mention that he seems to have a pretty good sense of humor:

“When I started this project, I wanted to see if I could push the limits of twisty puzzle design using an FDM 3D printer,” he says at the end of his triumphant Youtube video. “I think I’ve shown that as long as you build a strong core and have that blow up, and then build a stronger core, and have that blow up, and then build a core that is stronger still…that dream is a achievable.”

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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