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[ortwin]

Thanks. I will have to order one now. I wonder if I can just wrap it with a string and throw it.  You are getting me into the time sinkhole of twist puzzles against my will! 

Looking at the photos, Ronald's looks like a master pyramorphix but Patricio's doesn't. I may be all confused, but the "tip" on the pyramorphix splits into different pieces while in Patricio's it's just one piece (a corner). But Ronald said they were the same . . . 

@tao: please read my last post again, I edited it in the meantime again.
The tip of the mastermorphix does not split into different pieces in normal play. It only looks like that because it is put together from different color material, the same with the centers.

[ta0]

Maybe I should start with getting a regular throw top and practice until I can do a boomerang. Any recommendations there? Is it  possible to practice indoors without totally wrecking the flat?

You are going to Marines this week, aren't you? You will get the best possible advice and instructions.
With a small top with a plastic tip, like the Short Circuit, you can learn boomerang without wrecking your place.

[ortwin]

...
You are going to Marines this week, aren't you? You will get the best possible advice and instructions.
With a small top with a plastic tip, like the Short Circuit, you can learn boomerang without wrecking your place.

Yes I am going and I am excited! My train will leave Göttingen in about 36 hours.
I did plan to, and I will ask for advice  there for a top suited for a total beginner. But at this point in the thread it felt natural to ask since it seemed like a good reason to learn a boomerang  to have the possibility to unify the three hobbies.
Thank you for your advice. Recently I saw a throw top in a local toy store (Trompospace?). Could be they have it for a long time already but until a year ago (almost exactly) I did not even know that such things existed (except gasing).

[P Sidgman R]

I have been inactive for some time. I haven't made much progress with the new design, the last thing I did was try to find a suitable size for the core, but I've been having trouble getting the small pieces to not be too weak or easy to break.
I find the solution topic interesting, my suggestion is to look for information about "commutators and conjugates", this will always be a good tool to solve any twisted puzzle.

[ortwin]

I have been inactive for some time. ...

Well, I learned to do a boomerang in the meantime!
I hope to soon be able to get a mass produced Rubik Top, I put a lot of time in learning the skill! After all, that is the reason why I kind of said here I should learn it. 

[ortwin]

Is it a cube ?

                      NO!!

Is it a lemon ??

                      NOO!!!

What is it then???

                      It is SUPERTOP!!! 

Well, not that much "super" about it, just a Rubik's cube type puzzle ( regular 3x3x3 mechanism) that is supposed to look like a lemon.
I ordered it here because it looked to me as if I could easily put a string to it and throw a boomerang like we have seen it done in this topic with puzzles made especially for that purpose.


 The following video shows that it can be spun by hand alright and that it can do the puzzle cube turns. It has to be aligned well before a move, it is not as forgiving as modern 3x3x3 cubic puzzles, but then the movement is smooth.
 



Putting a string on it did not work on the original shape, nothing to hold onto for the string to get a start.
After a few turns I could arrive a the following shape that I could wrap a string around.


 Because the tip it can now spin on has a flat area in the center it spins a bit less well as an the other side seen in the video above, but it works if spun by hand.
So I gave it two timid tries to throw a boomerang above a sofa.
This looked more like an exercise in peeling a lemon because both times at least 5 parts of the yellow shell were pulled of by centrifugal forces and were flying through the room.
So I ended up taking almost all the loose yellow parts off and glued them back on.


 After this I was still not confident again with the lemon to throw a serious boomerang. Part of that being due to the fact that I can not leave this room much and try it outside because of my isolation because of a covid infection.
Anyways, sometimes I can get a spinner. In the video you can see the moves I need to get to that shape, the process of winding and a spinner.


  Edit: Just now I found another configuration that is letting me use the better point as a tip for the top and I can put a string around. 


 

The winding of the string is more simple in this case. Also the lemon does not flip over when I throw it. That is why I call it koma lemon.I could throw a few spinners like that, I did not try a boomerang or making a video.



 

[ta0]

Great find! I'm going to order one!

It might be possible to wrap the lemon without scrambling it using a rope with knots (and lots of patience) but your solution is better.

PS: I'm thinking on moving this post to the Rubik top thread.

[Jeremy McCreary]

Hope your quarantine goes well. I'm sure you'll find plenty to do.

[ortwin]

Thank you Jeremy!
No more symptoms today. So if my test comes back negative on Sunday, I am a free man again!

[ta0]

I received the Rubik lemon (in a kit together with an apple and a banana puzzle  ). Just for fun, I attempted to wrap it with a rope. It took some work but finally was successful:



When I threw it, it spun but four tiles flew away because of centrifugal force.
Now I think I'm going to replace the top and bottom tiles with 3D printed tiles for the crown and tip.

[ortwin]

I received the Rubik lemon (in a kit together with an apple and a banana puzzle  ). ...
...

That was a fast lemon delivery! Mine took I think about six weeks to reach me.
How about the banana, can you get it to spin? I remember we had a strange video on another thread with a weird spinning banana. And you posted something about a spinning banana stand or so.

...
Now I think I'm going to replace the top and bottom tiles with 3D printed tiles for the crown and tip.

Or you could replace not the tiles, but the screws sitting beneath those tiles. Take longer screws that go through those tiles and stick out by a cm or so. Of course you would also require  some kind of nut beneath the tile.

[ta0]

The lemon and the apple got me confortable with shape shifting puzzles, so I went back to Sidgman's (colored) spintop puzzle and I finally could solve it!
I'm still using my own inefficient algorithms, but I did follow Ortwin's suggestion and searched harder for one to rotate just (any) two centers.

I've just upgraded it with springs and now the layers rotate much better. I found a little hack that let me put the springs: I removed the middle of the rail of the center caps. So now I have much more space for the spring. I could have printed new ones, but it was easier to just carve them with the Dremel.

[HYDRUS17R]

Retour d'information sur l'utilisation de la toupie rubik, j'ai saupoudré la toupie avec du talc et cela améliore sensiblement la rotation des éléments. J’ai renouvelé cette opération lorsque j’ai ressenti un peu de résistance et c'est parfait. Comme mentionné dans les infos précédentes de ce post, mes toupies rubik disposent des pièces que j’ai modifiées pour insérer les ressorts et faire le montage plus facilement.

[jim in paris]

salut compère

du talc pour lubrifier le rubix ! il fallait essayer

dans le meme genre ya la magnésie ,
le truc en poudre pour l escalade

à tester

bonne journée sous le soleil

jim

[ortwin]

Just found another rubik cube fruit that looks a lot like a peg top:


https://www.hknowstore.com/locale/en-US/item.aspx?corpname=nowstore&itemid=09e6edd7-9402-4fb6-b4fe-296465e06860