Introduction: Origami Template

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It all started with the need to make a Lot of origami boxes for selling some small candles.

Having looked through a bunch of designs the one that was both sturdy, only used one square of paper and let see the inside.

However the folding took more than 15 minutes per box, while trying to make them look nice, and that with a soft paper

I need a stiffer paper that would allow more rigidity in the boxes, however this made said paper extra difficult to bend and prone to tearing so I needed a way to score the paper fast, clean and easier than the normal method

Supplies

Physical elements

  • MDF boards (3mm is a good thickness)
  • paper (for the blueprint)
  • paper (for the final origami)
  • bonefolder / folding bone (can also use a plastic wrapped clip)cutter or gouge

Software

  • inkscape (or similar)

Access to

  • a laser cutter (alternatively a 3d printer, but that process I'll explain in a different project)

Step 1: Making the Blueprint

When folding origami, there tends to be a lot of intermediate folds that help us guide and score the paper for when we finally have to make the final origami

Thus, this is the hardest part of the project.

You first have to make the origami and unfold it back up, making notes of which folds are necessary for the final object

Then, in inkscape (or similar) you make a drawing (in two colors, one for the size of the paper, a second color for the scored lines where the folds will go) drawing where the folds are. Save the lines drawing in an svg. This drawing will be used later

Step 2: Making the Template

Sending the svg file (from inkscape) to a laser-cutting place (or using your own laser cutter) you set the perimeter color to cut, and the bends color to score, with 1 millimeter of thickness on both sides of the drawn line (as shown in the first picture

Then, with a gouge or a cutter you cut the channels in between the millimeter lines

the space between lines is small enough that your not really even cutting, just clearing out the channel

the reason the two images are not the exact same is because those are actually two different templates of the same origami box, one I modified to make the base a bit bigger

Step 3:

Finally, now we can start pumping out origami like a specialized automata

As seen in the video, (forgive the low visibility, I really need a camera stand) the next step is to place the soon-to-be origami paper on top of the template, and score the lines with the "sharp" side of the bonefolder

When all the lines are scored, the paper is easier to fold in the right places

thus we can proceed to folding our new origami.

As shown in the video, the entire process is now less than 10 minutes, and this not having folded many boxes in more than two years; a huge time improvement compared to the normal process, aditionally, the stiffness of this paper made folding origami with it near impossible, however the scoring primed the paper to be bent in those places, making it entirely possible