Show HN: A working 3D model of an Enigma machine

primitivesuave 53 points 19 comments September 29, 2026
enigma.design · View on Hacker News

I watched the excellent Veritasium video [1] on the Enigma machine, and watched the full animation by Jared Owen [2], but was still a bit confused on how the inner mechanics of an Enigma machine work. I used Astra to build out the inner components through a combination of reference images, writing out hundreds of extremely detailed prompts, and building my own inspection tools to ensure that every part is sized and positioned in a historically accurate way. It's still a work in progress, but would love any feedback on the experience so far! 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsBZOcqZerk 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybkkiGtJmkM

Discussion Highlights (4 comments)

psolidgold

Seems pretty cool but unfortunately the poor performance on mobile (Chrome 154 and Android 17) makes it unusable for me. I'll have to check it out on desktop.

anonydsfsfs

I love the presentation! Would you mind sharing the source code?

ted_dunning

It would be nice to be able to back up in the sequence. There were a few times where I realized I had not fully understood a previous step and would have like to be able to review some previous steps. Otherwise this is completely excellent!

adityamishra241

This is really cool. The attention to detail on the internal mechanics is impressive, especially the inspection tools you built. Looking forward to seeing where you take it!

Semantic search powered by Rivestack pgvector
8,041 stories · 75,100 chunks indexed