How To Take Apart The Rubik's Cube And Put It Back Together

If you can't solve the Rubik's Cube the easiest way to reset the scrambled cube to the solved position is to take it apart and put it back together with the colours fixed. Certainly much easier to disassemble than peeling the stickers off and reapply them one-by-one. Or maybe you just want to take it apart by curiosity to see the inner core mechanism.

Speedcubers regularly disassemble their puzzles to lubricate them with petroleum jelly or silicone to enhance turning speed.

Sometimes the cube "explodes" during the solve when the tensioning is set too loose and pieces are catching. In this case you have to put it back together. Whatever is the reason, you have to make this operation gently not to break some pieces.

To take it apart rotate the top face 45 degrees and try to pop out an upper edge piece as seen on the picture. Use a screwdriver if your finger is not strong enough or the cube is too stiff. If your Rubik's Cube is too tough try to twist a side layer to set free the inner anchor of the upper edge. When the first piece came out the two corners will fall out and the rest of the pieces come out easily.

There are eight corner, twelve edge pieces and the inner core containing the six centers. To adjust the tension of the Rubik's Cube pop out the caps on the center pieces and screw in or out the bolt. If the cube is too loose then it will turn easier but pieces might pop out. Try to find the balance and don't make it too tight either.

Assemble the Rubik's Cube

Our assembly process:

1. Build the cube putting the pieces in random positions
2. Try to solve it as far as you can
3. Adjust the parity errors taking out the wrong pieces

We start the assembly with a big pile of edge and corner pieces and the core mechanism. We start by popping in the edge pieces on one side. The core will hold the four pieces in place. Place this face on the desk and slide the 4 corners in.

Slide in the edges of the middle layer from the top. Start the last layer with an edge piece slightly turning a side face for helping the insertion.

The corners slide in easily. Repeat this until you reach the last edge piece. Pop this in with a gentle move turning the right face slightly counterclockwise if necessary.

We have a scrambled cube which is probably unsolvable because we just put the pieces together randomly. There might be a rotated edge and/or corner. Solve the cube while you reach a point where a corner/edge is turned wrong. Take out the wrong pieces and fix them.

Unfortunately you can't use the online Rubik's Cube solver for unsolvable cubes because it would throw an invalid scramble error message.