Infinity Cube, Magic Cube, Flexible Cube, Folding Cube, Yoshimoto Cube for Flexible TPU filament by lgbu

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

Infinity Cube, Magic Cube, Flexible Cube, Folding Cube, Yoshimoto Cube
Yet another experiment using TPU—the magic/flexible/folding/infinity cube or whatever fancy name you could think of. According to Reference 3, it was invented by Naoki Yoshimoto in 1971, which I am not absolutely sure.
In this 3D design project, I took account of the tolerance between the little cubes and the bending connectors among them using chamfer and grooves. It can be printed in one piece. The result goes beyond my expectations. It comes in three sizes: 20mm^3, 25mm^3, and 30mm^3.
In light of the complex navigations and physical constraints, this should make an interesting intermediate design project for students. In my case, I first made a huge model using 48 polydron squares and adhesive tape before sketching them in Fusion 360. With parametric design, you could easily change its dimensions. Have fun!
References
https://www.math.nmsu.edu/~breakingaway/Lessons/MFC/MFC.html
https://www.chicaandjo.com/2008/05/08/magic-folding-wooden-photo-cubes/
http://www1.ttcn.ne.jp/a-nishi/y_cube/z_y_cube.html