Introduction

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As you can see in the clip above the machine folds a very basic paper air plane and then throws it.

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The machine is completely out of lego and has about 9000-12000 pieces. It is controlled by 2 lego NXT units which controlls 6 servo motors, 12 power function motors, 9 pneumatic cylinder and get input from 10 sensors.

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The hole process takes about 1 minute and 45 seconds to fold a plane.

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How it all started

The idea to build a machine out of lego that fold paper air plane was not my own. It came from the comment section on another lego machine on youtube. That machine assembled small lego air planes and someone in the comment section mentiond that the next step would be to make a machine that fold paper air planes.

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This got me thinking. I grabbed a piece of paper and started to fold, so i could figure out the best order for the folds and how mechanism for each fold had to be built around the paper.

What i could not figure out was how to fit all the mechanism for the different folds without crasching in to each other.

After several small prototypes i gave up.

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The flaw in my thinking was that i got stuck in the idea that it all had to be done in one station rather then three that i ended up with.

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A couple of month later i was on a business trip to start up a machine that i had made electrical design for. That machine  folded packages. Ofcourse this machine didn't do all fold at one spot, it folded the package gradually as the packages moved forward. Just as my machine now does in the folding station in the middle.

I had now realized that all the folds didn't have to be at one spot, i could just move the paper between different stations and if possible fold the paper as it moves forward. This solved the biggest problems with my first idea.

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As soon as i got home i started to build. Three weekends later the first version of the machine was complete. (see below)

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