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Origami engineering : advanced converting for novel paper products

University of British Columbia

The recent work has focused to develop a fully automated prototype in order to make products in large quantities. A unique and novel methodology has been developed to create self-folding paper products. This platform technology enables us to create sophisticated complex 3D paper structure from ordinary 2D paper sheet. The self-folding material is composed of pre-cut and creased paper and heat shrinking thermoplastic polymer. A computational drawing tool is first used to design folds for particular 3D shape then a computer numerical controller cutter with knife at variable pressure is employed to cut paper and the thermoplastic polymer. The cut paper and thermoplastic polymer can be attached together by a large number of polymeric materials and several means of attaching polymer-paper have been explored. The effect of various polymer-paper attachments including chemical adhesion, stitching and welding was studied. Heat welding procedure was quite successful and it showed to be promising technique to make a strong polymer-paper bond. An experimental device was made and a series of experiments were conducted to reveal the significant factors, their effective range, and their impact on the paper-polymer bond strength. The effect of pressure, temperature, welding attachment area and, thickness of paper on the paper-polymer bond strength were determined and a database of strength attachments with an effective factors variation was collected. First, our in-house developed servo-robot for cutting was assisted with automatic welding system and then a large flatbed cutter has been used and functionally changed to perform cutting, creasing and adhering paper and plastic in one step. The effect of significant factors such as attachment distance to fold line, heating temperature and paper thickness on the folding angle has been studied and discussed in chapter 4. Several examples of folded decorative and industrial products have been developed using this technique and introduced in chapter 5.

Text

2015-04-01

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/52607

Mechanical Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/