Paper Airplane Machine Gun V2.0

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]!

40 thoughts on “Paper Airplane Machine Gun V2.0

    1. 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.

    2. 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

      1. 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..)

    3. 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.

    1. 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!

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