Can you solve the Sudoku Tubie?

Hidden in the Sudoku Tubie design is a 6 x 6 Sudoku puzzle. Your task is twofold. First you must identify how the wheels have to line up to make a valid Sudoku solution. In the unrolled example on the right, each of the numbers is shown once in each row and column, and once in each frame. Your puzzle is something like this when lined up correctly. The second task is to move the wheels around to get to that position. The second bit is harder than the first!

There are six secondary puzzles within the Tubie, which are to line up the colours, like this one. Because of the layout, the colours won't all come right at the same time, so you have a series of coloured lines to look for.

Solutions - Step 1

The first step is to push the red pins around until they line up, like this:

The position with the red pins lined up is called En-Ra-Ha and is the common starting-point for all the solutions.

Step 2

Push all five wheels around until a picture on Wheel 1 is against its matching picture on Wheel 0. The picture above shows the starting position to find the Yellow line. To solve the Sudoku, line up the Blue 2 on Wheel 1 against the Orange 5 on Wheel 0.

Step 3

You now have to make a sequence of moves following a simple code. The five moving wheels are numbered 1 to 5 as shown, U means Up or push away from you, D means Down or pull towards you. A move such as 123D means you find a row where only wheels 1, 2 and 3 have a pin, and you pull those three wheels Down one space. The moves 123D and 25U are shown here.

By changing the order of the colours, you can go right round the Tubie in even fewer moves. Can you work out the shortest route?