Building An Assembly Line For Origami Pigeons

June 9, 2025 by John Elliot V 12 Comments

When it comes to hacks, the best ones go to extremes. Either beautiful in their simplicity, or magnificent in their excess. And, well, today’s hack is the latter: excessive. [HTX Studio] built an assembly line for origami pigeons!

One can imagine the planning process went something like this:

Make origami pigeon assembly line

?

Profit

But whatever the motivation, this is an impressive and obviously very well engineered machine. Even the lighting is well considered. It’s almost as if it were made for show…

Now, any self-respecting nerd should know the difference between throughput and latency. From what we could glean from the video, the latency through this assembly line is in the order of 50 seconds. Conservatively it could probably have say 5 birds in progress at a time. So let’s say every 10 seconds we have one origami pigeon off the assembly line. This is a machine and not a person so it can operate twenty four hours a day, save downtime for repairs and maintenance, call it 20 hours per day. We could probably expect more than 7,000 paper pigeons out of this machine every day. Let’s hope they’ve got a buyer lined up for all these birds.

If you’re interested in assembly lines maybe we could interest you in a 6DOF robotic arm, or if the origami is what caught your eye, check out the illuminating, tubular, or self-folding kind!

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A blue and white, 3D printed rose sits on a black surface with a fuzzy tan background behind it.

Thermorphs: Self-Folding 3D Prints

February 27, 2025 by Navarre Bartz 3 Comments

Prints separating from the build plate or warping when you don’t want them to is a headache for the additive manufacturer. [CNC Kitchen] walks us through a technique to use that warping to our advantage.

Based on a paper by researchers at the Morphing Matter Lab at UC Berkeley, [CNC Kitchen] wanted to try making 3D printed objects that could self-assemble when placed in hot water. Similar to a bimetal strip that you find in simple thermostats, the technique takes advantage of the stresses baked into the print and how they can relax when reaching the glass transition temperature of the polymer. By printing joints with PLA and TPU layers, you can guide the deformation in the direction you wish, and further tune the amount of stress in the part by changing the print speed of different sections.

[CNC Kitchen] found that Hilbert curve infill slows the printer down sufficiently to create relatively stress-free sections of a print to create flat sections which is an improvement over the original researchers’ all TPU flat sections with respect to rigidity. We’ve covered how to reduce warping in 3D prints, but now we can use those techniques in reverse to design self-assembling structures. These parts, being thermoplastic, can also be heated, reformed, and then exhibit shape memory when placed back into hot water. It’s very experimental, but we’re curious to see what sort of practical or artistic projects could be unlocked with this technique.

We’ve seen a few other interesting techniques with folded objects like laser cutter origami, some flat-to-folded 3D prints that might be interesting to try with this technique, and also folded hybrid mechanisms made with laser cutting and 3D printing.

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Origami-Inspired, Self-locking Structures With 3D Printing

December 13, 2024 by Donald Papp 2 Comments

Researchers recently shared details on creating foldable, self-locking structures by using multi-material 3D printing. These origami-inspired designs can transition between flat and three-dimensional forms, locking into place without needing external support or fasteners.

The 3D structure of origami-inspired designs comes from mountain and valley fold lines in a flat material. Origami designs classically assume a material of zero thickness. Paper is fine, but as the material gets thicker things get less cooperative. This technique helps avoid such problems.

An example of a load-bearing thick-film structure.

The research focuses on creating so-called “thick-panel origami” that wraps rigid panels in a softer, flexible material like TPU. This creates a soft hinge point between panels that has some compliance and elasticity, shifting the mechanics of the folds away from the panels themselves. These hinge areas can also be biased in different ways, depending on how they are made. For example, putting the material further to one side or the other will mechanically bias that hinge to fold into either a mountain, or a valley.

Thick-panel origami made in this way paves the way towards self-locking structures. The research paper describes several different load-bearing designs made by folding sheets and adding small rigid pieces (which are themselves 3D printed) to act as latches or stoppers. There are plenty of examples, so give them a peek and see if you get any ideas.

We recently saw a breakdown of what does (and doesn’t) stick to what when it comes to 3D printing, which seems worth keeping in mind if one wishes to do some of their own thick-panel experiments. Being able to produce a multi-material object as a single piece highlights the potential for 3D printing to create complex and functional structures that don’t need separate assembly. Especially since printing a flat structure that can transform into a 3D shape is significantly more efficient than printing the finished 3D shape.

A large array of triangles and colored lines showing the folding pattern of the origami computer

Turing Complete Origami

February 21, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 6 Comments

Origami can be an interesting starting point for a project, but we weren’t expecting [Thomas C. Hull] and [Inna Zakharevich]’s Turing complete origami computer.

Starting with the constraint of flat origami (the paper folds back on top of itself), the researchers designed a system that could replicate all the functionality of the previously-proven Turing complete Rule 110 automaton. The researchers walk us through the construction of AND, OR, NAND, NOR, and NOT gates via paper as well as the various “wires” and “gadgets” that connect the operators or filter out noise.

Everything ends up a large mess of triangles and hexagons with optional creases to make the whole thing work. While the origami computer probably won’t be helping you slice 3D prints anytime soon, much like a Magic computer, the engineering and math involved may prove useful in other applications.

We’re no strangers to origami here, having covered origami machines, medical robots, or using a desktop vinyl cutter to pre-score your project.

Tiny Robots That Bring Targeted Drug Delivery And Treatment A Little Bit Closer

January 7, 2023 by Maya Posch 8 Comments

Within the world of medical science fiction they are found everywhere: tiny robots that can zip through blood vessels and intestines, where they can deliver medication, diagnose medical conditions and even directly provide treatment. Although much of this is still firmly in the realm of science-fiction, researchers at Stanford published work last year on an origami-based type of robots, controlled using an external magnetic field. Details can be found in the Nature Communications paper. Continue reading “Tiny Robots That Bring Targeted Drug Delivery And Treatment A Little Bit Closer” →

Ply Your Craft With Tubular Origami

December 1, 2022 by Abe Connelly 3 Comments

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have just published a paper on creating modular tubular origami machines which they call “Kinegami”, a portmanteau of “kinematic” and “origami”.

The idea behind their work is to create individual modules and joint mechanisms that can then be chained together to create a larger “serial” robot. Some example joints they propose are “prismatic” joints, allowing for linear motion, and “revolute” joints, which allow for rotational motion. One of the more exciting aspects of this process is that the joint mechanisms are origami-like structures which can be constructed from a single piece of flat material which is folded and glued together to make the module. Of particular interest is that the crease pattern for the origami-like folds can be laser cut into a material, cardboard or thin acrylic for example, which can be used as a guide to create the resulting structure. The crease patterns for the supporting structures, such as tubes or joints, can be taken from pre-formatted patterns or customized, so this method is very accessible to the hobbyist and could allow for a rich new method of rapid project prototyping.

The researchers go on to discuss how to create the composition of modules from a specification of joints and links (from a “Denavit-Hartenberg” specification) to attaching the junctures together while respecting curvature constraints (via the “Dubins path”). Their paper offers the gritty details along with the available accompanying source files. Origami hacking is a favorite subject of ours and we’ve featured articles on the use of origami in medical technology to creating inflatable actuators.

Video after the break!

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Cranes made by Origami (Orizuru). The height is 35mm.

Bringing The Art Of Origami And Kirigami To Robotics And Medical Technology

March 9, 2022 by Maya Posch 5 Comments

Traditionally, when it comes to high-tech self-assembling microscopic structures for use in medicine delivery, and refined, delicate grippers for robotics, there’s been a dearth of effective, economical options. While some options exist, they are rarely as effective as desired, with microscopic medicine delivery mechanisms, for example, not having the optimal porosity. Similarly, in so-called soft robotics, many compromises had to be made.

A promising technology here involves the manipulation of flat structures in a way that enables them to either auto-assemble into 3D structures, or to non-destructively transform into 3D structures with specific features such as grippers that might be useful in both micro- and macroscopic applications, including robotics.

Perhaps the most interesting part is how much of these technologies borrow from the Japanese art of origami, and the related kirigami.

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