Working glider 3D printed directly onto tissue paper October 21

The evolution of the paper airplane

Andrew Plumb (aka @clothbot), who I’ve interviewed here before, published an awesome glider design today called the PaperFly.

Based on an earlier glider (the Bukobot Fly) that was entirely 3D printed, the PaperFly is instead a minimal frame printed directly onto a sheet of tissue paper!

Andrew also put a tutorial on Instructables that covers the prep work necessary to make one of the gliders. Basically, in order to keep the paper flat and unmoving, it has to be secured in a cardboard frame that is then placed on the printer’s build platform. Like this:

Tissue paper and frame

Once the glider has finished printing, the weight of the nose must be adjusted to make it flightworthy. How is that done? By adding LEGO pieces to the connectors on the nose cone, of course. :)

PaperFly on platform

The design file is an OpenSCAD script, so it can be extensively customized or adjusted to fit on the user’s own 3D printer.

If you’d like to make one for yourself, check out the full details on Instructables here: http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printing-PLA-on-Tissue-Paper/

Derek Quenneville is a 3D printing evangelist who posts weekly on the Ponoko blog. Follow him on Twitter @techknight.

Posted in 3D Printing, Derek Quenneville by Derek Quenneville | Comments are off for this post

Make your own stuff using: 3D Printing

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One Response to “Working glider 3D printed directly onto tissue paper”

  1. Duann Says:
    October 22nd, 2012 at 7:01 am

    That is really clever..

    Thanks