Pop Up Experiments

I’ve been thinking about pop up books for a little while now and wanted to try my hand at making some pop-up designs of my own. Specifically I wanted to try to create a pop up that doubles as a kinetic sculpture marble run. So I went to my local Michaels and loaded up on #11 blades, a cutting mat, and a straightedge and then went to town on some cardstock.

My first attempt taught me a lot of very important lessons, and it was fun to be working with my hands instead of jumping straight into a computer to CAD something out. The biggest lesson I learned here is that in order for paper to fold down flat and pop-up, all the creases need to be bent in the same direction. In this first design, I utilized folds at a bunch of different criss-crossing angles to create the track surface. Though that works great as a paper sculpture, it isn’t able to squish flat.

In preparation for playing around with pop-up designs, I had ordered two volumes of Origamic Architecture by Masahiro Chatani. In the books I saw he utilized a technique of cutting lots of narrow strips at different heights to create the effect of smooth curves or inclines, so I tried making a very simple incline using that method. It worked well at containing the marble, even if it looks a bit boring.

But a proof of concept is a proof of concept, and I iterated on the design to make something a little more interesting:

This design can even fold flat. At this point, I wanted to try to make something a little more polished. A laser cutter would be the perfect tool, but I unfortunately don’t have one, so I instead tried to design a version that could be 3D printed with living hinges. Here it is in CAD:

And here it is printed out and rolling.

There’s a little bit of weirdness with pieces sloping because of the thickness of the 3D print and the flexibility of the living hinge as compared to high quality paper, but otherwise I think this has to be one of my favorite pieces I’ve designed.

It was fun to dive down this rabbit hole and play around with paper for a little while. Definitely looking forward to trying more of it!