To answer some common questions, the two mazes are different aesthetically, in maze design, and also in dimensions.
Appearance
The handmade mint has a pebble blasted sleeve giving it a beautiful and unique matte sheen that no other puzzle has. The production mint has the traditional anodized sleeve. This effect also results in a different color in appearance. Furthermore, the handmade mint shaft is unplated and follows the numbering scheme MT XX-30.
Maze Design
The maze design in the handmade mint is different than the production mint. The change is small, and if you are able to solve the handmade mint, you will be able to solve the production mint. The change presents a small difficulty increase, making the production mint slightly more difficult.
Dimensions
This is the part that is incredibly frustrating. The length of the shaft of the production mint is smaller than other Revomazes. The shaft on the production mint is about a millimeter smaller on each side. While this may not sound like much, it feels like the difference between hanging off a ledge with a full grip compared to your finger nails. Furthermore, since the production mint is plated, the corners of the heptagon (7 sided polygon) are smoother causing a weakened grip. Combined, these small changes cause great difficulty navigating the maze, especially in tight corners near the main reset ring. Included is a picture that shows the differences between the two mazes. The handmade puzzle parts are on the left. The production parts are on the right.
You can also see that the drawbars are different sizes to accommodate the different shaft sizes. The outer sleeve is the same dimensions as all of the other puzzles.
The Pins
The final task of any Revomaze is to drop the pins into the drawbar to extract the shaft. Typically, the puzzle only needs a slight tap upside to properly drop the pin. This puzzle is different. The pins in this puzzle are incredibly frustrating. First of all, it took me three minutes of banging the puzzle on multiple different surfaces before I finally got the pin to drop. Flat carpet seemed to work best. (Please don't tell me I was doing this wrong. I know which way to orient the puzzle to drop the pin.) However, that was only the beginning. Normally when you remove the shaft, it is easy for the pins to fall out of the drawbar so that you can remove the draw bar. These pins did not want to come out.
Perhaps the pins are slightly thicker, or the grooves cut for them are smaller. Or perhaps there was just some oil keeping them in place. Regardless, removing the pins was a challenge more difficult that solving the puzzle. After tapping the puzzle gently on multiple surfaces with no success, I resorted to other measures. The maze pin was successfully removed by haggling it with a pair of scissors. The drawbar pin was much more of a pain. Since it is protected on all sides by the shaft, it is hard to remove surgically. Magnets did not work. Tweezers did not work. I had to use an adhesive to pull the pin out to finally disassemble the puzzle.
The problems with the dimensions and the pins make this puzzle more frustrating than other Revomazes. On a positive note, the maze is very well designed and perhaps one of my favorite mazes.
The Mint Handmade measured in at 9.4mm on the flat part only. Both ends were about the same measurement.