3D Printers are great for printing out parts or items you need, but can they really help if you run out of paper clips? Yes, the all important and extremely overlooked bent metal fastener can put a serious damper on your day if not readily available. There is a solution to this problem, it’s called the Paper Clip Maximizer 1.0. The only consequence of using such a machine may be the destruction of mankind.
The machine takes a spool of wire and methodically bends it into a paper clip shape. Just like an extruder on a 3D Printer, there is a knurled drive wheel with a spring-loaded bearing pinching the wire. This drive wheel is powered by an RC servo that has been modified for continuous rotation. After the drive mechanism, the wire passes through a sturdy guide block. Upon exit, the wire finds the bending head, also powered by a servo. There is a bearing on the end of the bending head that is used to bend the wire around the guide block. After making several bends to form the paper clip, the bending head swings around to cut off the newly manufactured clip with an abrasive wheel. Unfortunately, this part of the process doesn’t work well. The cutoff wheel motor is powered directly by the Arduino that controls the entire machine, the power output of which is not enough to easily cut the wire. It can also leave a sharp burr on the cut wire which is not a great feature for paper clips to have. But we just see these as future fodder for hacking sessions!
someone watches to much how its made…and I like it.
That’s the first thing that came to mind when I watched the video. I even imagined someone narrating in the background.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9O_kGbEsW8
That’s a funky link. The original blog post is here:
http://credentiality2.blogspot.com/2015/01/paperclip-maximizer-10.html
What we really need is a machine to bend useless paper clips back into straight wire.
That or into test probes…
No kidding. Clipping paper together is probably my least common use of paper clips.
This is one of the most compelling ideas I’ve seen on this site. Especially if it were compact enough to keep in your tool bag.
A box of paper clips is probably easier to carry, but anyway.
As for compelling, there’s this: http://hackaday.com/2012/05/04/diwire-bender-makes-nearly-any-shape-imaginable/. Dunno if they ever finished it, but if you want to waste an hour or two search YouTube for commercial versions.
All I really want is a device that efficiently straightens paper clips that fits in my pocket. Basically the standard roller method on a single axis should work.
Sorry dude, for some reason I thought you wanted a pocket-sized paper clip bender, you know for all those times you just have to join two pieces of paper together.
Mea culpa read fail and all that.
Even better would be as [Kevin] suggests, something to turn paper clips into test probe adapters.
(For those wondering, wrap the wire around the multimeter probe tip a few times and bend it out. You can now poke it into breadboards and header sockets etc. Very handy.)
The deluxe model will strip the plastic off the coated ones too.
Now let’s see it make springs :D
I was thinking the same thing… the annealing would be a pain, though. Maybe some kind of induction heater would work. It would be nice to be able to custom “print” springs. I just -love- having to rifle through the jar of recycled springs every time I need that one coil spring that fits just-so where I need it…
You can buy pre-tempered spring wire (music wire) and just form the finished product.
Super cool, given it was built using RC servos, but…
It looks like they are bending shielded copper wire.
It would be really great if it made paper clip chains endlessly.
super cool!!!
I dunno…. Though it IS very unlikely, destruction of mankind would be a REALLY bad consequence.
Now if only you could feed dough through it it could make pretzels!