The Bump Pyraminx is a shape transformation of the Pyraminx puzzle that was inspired by the Bump Cube/ Mirror Blocks designed by Hidetoshi Takeji. Each piece of the puzzle is unique in size, so when mixed up the puzzle changes shape and becomes distorted. The puzzle has been given a uniform colour scheme, in keeping with the style of “Bump” puzzles and also to make it that little bit harder to solve.
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I based this version on a White Tomy brand Pyraminx as it is all that I had spare at the time of building, although I would have preferred a Black Pyraminx as it would have kept a better colour consistency.
The pieces were extended using triangular panels of polystyrene plastic sheet of different thicknesses; *0.5mm, 1mm, 2mm and 3mm, with each panel having an edge length of 32mm. This worked to the desired effect and resulted in the mild “bumping” of pieces I envisioned.
*0.5mm sheeting was only used to cover the White plastic of the puzzle on which it is based, so had the puzzle been based on a Black plastic Pyraminx the heights would have been; standard, 1mm, 2mm and 3mm.
To hide the joins between panels, I used Milliput, a two part epoxy sculpt. I applied it to the edges of each piece; this also helped to take the edge off the panels as they were quite sharp which made the puzzle quite harsh to handle. Once the Milliput had dried (after roughly four hours) I sanded away the excess and rounded off the edges of pieces so as to make the puzzle nice to handle and to perfect the aesthetics (two hour process).
As Hidetoshi did with his puzzle, I cut and applied stickers of uniform colour (Matt Silver) to the puzzle so as the emphasis remained on restoring the puzzle back to its solved shape. I cut the stickers by hand using a craft knife, steel rule, protractor and Matt Silver adhesive backed vinyl. The uniformly coloured stickers make the puzzle appear deceivingly easy and not too dissimilar to a regular Pyraminx.
As this puzzle was only a prototype of my concept there is room for improvement; I think if I were to revist this puzzle I would definitely emphasis on the degree to which the puzzle is "bumped". This I feel would be better achieved by either building up the pieces using epoxy sculpt or creating box type extentions using plastic sheet.
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