How To: Customise a Rubick's

 

Custom Puzzle Cube
Design + Make: Marty van de Weyer
Cost $4 / Time 1-1.5 hours
 
Looking to confound friends and irritate people?  With the standard puzzle cube losing its ability to captivate, its time to knock things up a notch by giving it an all-new exterior. With a few bits and pieces you can grant this puzzle a new alluring appearance or use it as another way to show your complete and utter devotion to a particular something/someone.  I decided to use a design of the ever faithful R2-D2 which I found on cubeecraft.com.  This site has some nice paper craft designs of characters that can be used to wrap around the whole surface. So, with cube in one hand and mouse in the other it’s time to open your mind to the infinite number of interesting (and fiendish) possibilities.  I think I’ll do an M.C. Escher one next…
 
What You’ll Need: 
- A puzzle cube
- A pair of scissors
- A ruler
- Double sided tape
- Paper
- Some Photoshop skills
- Access to a printer
 

Step 1: The first step is to measure your cube.  Note down the overall size, the dimensions of the square stickers and width of the gaps between them.

 

Step 2:  The second stage is to create your faces.  Really all the images have to be is square, other than that it’s up to you.  If you take the path of using a Cubeecraft pattern you still may need to do some stretching as they are not all completely square.  Next use the dimensions you took down and some more computer wizardry to create a black ‘net’ which corresponds to the gaps on the cube.  This ‘net’ can then be copied and pasted on top of the square face images to give you the correct outlines to cut around.  After you have all six faces set up I suggest doing a test print first to check your squares against the existing ones on the cube.  If everything checks out go ahead to your final print using some good paper if you have it.

Step 3:  Next cut out each face from your sheet and apply double sided tape to the back.  You might be able to think of a cleverer way to adhere the squares but I would advise against using any form of glue; it takes time to dry and using glue usually results in lots of things becoming stuck to lots of other things but rarely the two things you actually want stuck together. 
 

Step 4: All that remains now is to cut, peel and stick the individual squares.  Keep in mind the more care you take the better the final result will look.  I highly recommend cutting a tiny triangle off each of the square’s points to simulate the rounded corners that the stickers usually have.  It takes a bit of extra effort but it really adds to the end result.  With your new stickers meticulously affixed take a moment to behold what you have created, an intriguing shelf object and/or torture device.
 

-Marty