Sunday, April 19, 2009

Blind Rubik's Cube


I saw this and thought a tactile rubik's cube was a good idea.

So I made one. Anyone need a cube they won't look at? Id love to send one to Bernard Morin the blind topologist.

1. Peel off the stickers
2. Get rid of crud left using white spirit
3. Scour the cube and the buttons with a stanley knife
4. Glue buttons onto cube
5. Wait


The result looks a bit like the Borg assimilated hello kitty.

I am going to do up another but this time with different textures instead of shapes. This gets over the symmetry problems. What substances should I use? I want to use felt and thinking of it reminded me of fuzzy felt

I dont want to get all Angela's Ashes here but really was fuzzy felt the best toy ever?

9 comments:

Barry M said...

That one you linked to looks like something out of Hellraiser. Anything bad happen when you solve it?

Yours looks like a My Little Pony would appear on solving it... Actually, maybe that's more frightening.

Iamreddave said...

Yeah mine is a lot more hello kitty then steampunk. The craft shop in cork is not emo enough. Ill post up some proper pictures of it later.

Mark Weston said...

I made a blind person's cube a few years ago using only black textures. I used rubber (old bike tire), felt, velcro, plastic (I just left the square as-is after peeling off the stickers), sandpaper, and leather. In use I find it difficult to distinguish the leather and the felt, so I'm keeping my eye out for other textures different from the other five to replace the felt or leather. And it has to be BLACK, as it looks very cool that way!
Sparky

Iamreddave said...

Thanks Mark. great ideas. All balck is a great idea. Is sandpaper not a bit tough on the fingers though?

Dan said...

Can you solve the tactile cube with your eyes closed? Can you solve a regular cube with your eyes open?

Iamreddave said...

no not with eyes closed yet. Part of the problem is the buttons I choose. You need to make similar ones far apart from each other.

Dan said...

Suggestion: instead of buttons, use 1 to 6 raised dots in the dice patterns. Flatback clear rhinestones would look really good on the black background. Real diamonds would look even better, but that might be overdoing it.

Iamreddave said...

Thanks Dan good idea. I took up Marks idea and made an all black one. How about drilling holes in the cube? Sort of an inverse braille

Dan said...

Holes would work. I was skeptical, but I tried reading dice with my fingertips, and I can do it. Matte black with holes would be awesome.