A little over two years ago we posted an amazing contraption that holds a stack of paper sheets, folds them into paper planes, and launches them. There’s now a newer version — the PFM A5 v2.0. It is over a meter long, weighs about 10 kilograms, and features a mind-boggling number of gears and moving parts. Video is embedded below.
In one end travels one sheet of paper after the next. At each stage in the process the paper is folded (symmetrically) and creased by a vertical wheel to make up the keel of the finished plane before launching out the other end. Amazing, and not a jam or “PC Load Letter” error message in sight!
This, of course, has a purpose… junk ads from the sky!
We covered an earlier version of this paper airplane gun back in 2014; the original was a marvel of engineering and this new version is no different.
There is very little that Dieter Michael Krone doesn’t know about paper airplanes. He has even written a comprehensive book (in German) with some excerpts on his site, along with a gallery of some of his work.
Thanks for the tip, [Itay]!
This makes me so unbelievably happy!
Yep, but don’t be fooled, it’s the music!
Who picks the mess up?
No PC Load Letter error in sight because it uses A5 not letter sized paper.
Could the range be increased? They don’t seem to go very far.
Not much mass and a lot of drag – likely not. More range would result from level flight (the inevitable tweaking of wings that you do when you make them by hand). A toy maker makes a “Power Up” motor/battery for paper airplanes but they look like a lot of frustration in a small box to me.
Maybe with either an improved paper airplane shape or a better launch mechanism? Something akin to those rotating ball launchers for baseballs, tennis balls, etc?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC60S7d_Nr4&t=2m53s
Could you just stick this at the end?
That *is* the launching mechanism used in the gun. If you look at the very end of the gun in the video you can see the two horizontal launching wheels.
How to improve it then? Raw wheel speed? Force? Wheel friction? The way the paper airplane is folded?
Yes and it proves that Japan and now China have been engaging in Psychological Warfare with us for so many years with printers that jam up with paper with regular monotony.
Takes off tin foil hat
Yep and nup…
The printers you describe are in the field of IT technology of what I call “peasant grade”
I.e. peasant grade laptop,
peasant grade printer,
….Cooker
…..etc…
The grades you’ll usually find in the industry are as follows:
Buisness grade: strong (most often), lasts longer (usually)
Legal grade: above and continue even when the consumables have ran out.
Peasant grade: work for a year then epic fail (broken hinges, paper-jams..)
You forgot military grade: Same as peasant grade but costs $58,000.
Damn it!
I knew I forgot something.
… for three months rental
This was esp true back in the days of Unix work stations and big iron.
Would need to use a different design. The classroom favorite back in elementary school was like this (the stereotypical paper plane), but the corners were folded to the center twice before the keel was formed. Much more effective.
I took that to its logical extreme and I think managed to get…I think 4 folds on the corners? Maybe more? Either way, the things couldn’t glide worth a damn, but you could chuck them as hard as you could and they’d still fly straight.
My smiling muscles are starting to cramp! Make them stop! :)
This needs to be a kit, or an actual product on store shelves.
So awesome! :D I remember thinking the first version was fake.
glad i dont have to pick all those planes up!
If what you see in the background is this guy’s house, I guess he can afford to pay someone to pick them up.
OK Donald, you’ve won Hackaday for 2017. The rest of us won’t be able to find anything NEAR as cool as this one to write up!
Well, this writeup wouldn’t exist without the kind soul that brought it to my attention in the first place!
I am still in awe of the sheer complexity, every bit of which needs to work properly or the whole thing goes off the rails.
The amount of the gun that is stationary seems to be by far in the minority; the thing looks like 90% moving parts!
THIS! for 1$ notes! For when you go to a strip bar…
Those devices are commercially available. They don’t make them into paper airplanes first though.
i did not know until tonight that my one true dream is to shoot paper airplane singles out of an automatic launcher into a stripper’s cleavage.
Imagine what you could then do with the tampon gun also featured today?
http://hackaday.com/2017/01/17/this-tampon-gun-wont-cramp-your-style/
Makin’ it plane!
Would be better if it made the “Classic” paper airplane for range.
You mean this? http://www.foldnfly.com/1.html
Agreed, it will travel farther (I hesitate to say “fly”, this is really more of a dart than a glider).
“You’ll shoot someone’s eye out, kid!”
Wow, instructions for making a paper plane – what’s happened to our schooling system?
Internet happened ;)
Yes, exactly that one :) I imagine it would be easy for him to modify the gun since it’s modular.
This is just so awesome and most interesting of all it appears to be entirely mechanical which is something you do not see too often these days.
Entirely mechanical? I don’t see the hand crank.
I wouldn’t use this in the UK, or you could be fined up to £2,500 ($3000 usd) for littering.
Load it with unrolled beer can metal to shoot down the drone swarms in the other post :D
perfect way to distribute “flyer”
might get fined because of littering though
WHERE CAN I BUY ONE?????!!!!!
Where can u buy one or get instructions to build
Have you considered making one that folds dollar bills into paper airplanes and launches them?