【Joint Press Release】Inkjet 4D Print: Self-folding Tessellated Origami Objects by Inkjet UV Printing
We would like to inform you that a Joint Press Release has been issued regarding the “Inkjet 4D Print: Self-folding Tessellated Origami Objects by Inkjet UV Printing” technology. Mr. Sugimoto, our company’s Senior Vice President, participated in this project.
Citation: Inkjet 4D Print: Self-folding Tessellated Origami Objects by Inkjet UV Printing
We propose Inkjet 4D Print, a self-folding fabrication method of 3D origami tessellations by printing 2D patterns on both sides of a heat-shrinkable base sheet, using a commercialized inkjet ultraviolet (UV) printer. Compared to the previous folding-based 4D printing approach using fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers [An et al. 2018], our method has merits in (1) more than 1200 times higher resolution in terms of the number of self-foldable facets, (2) 2.8 times faster printing speed, and (3) optional full-color decoration. This paper describes the material selection, the folding mechanism, the heating condition, and the printing patterns to self-fold both known and freeform tessellations. We also evaluated the self-folding resolution, the printing and transformation speed, and the shape accuracy of our method. Finally, we demonstrated applications enabled by our self-foldable tessellated objects.
The cap consists of 3426 surfaces.
