Aperture Science Business Card

Step 4: Close it Up, You're Done!

Ok, I lied in the last step. THIS is the trickiest part. Take the handle piece and place it on top of the eight skinny pieces. Try to get the flaps mostly lined up with the holes. This is where you're going to want to use tweezers. The goal is to get each of the flaps through the holes and folded down to fasten each skinny piece to the handle. The easiest way I've found to do this is one hole at a time. Once one hole is done, press down the flaps with your finger, and use the tweezers to line up the flaps with the next hole. Repeat this process until you've got  all the flaps through.

We're basically out of the woods now. Congratulations! There will be cake and grief counseling at the conclusion of this Instructable.

Put double sided tape on the cardboard piece. You have to be more careful here, because you don't want to get it on the handle piece. What I did was have it hang waaaay off the edge, and cut off the excess. Be careful not to disturb the handle though: it's very irritable.

Now all you need to do is stick the front piece of paper onto the cardboard, making sure they're lined up nicely. You're done! You've been a very good test subject. Please proceed to the next test chamber.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy. If you have any ideas on how to make this better/more efficiently, please let me know. Oh, and if anyone is interested in seeing a version that opens the aperture, instead of closing it, let me know in the comments.

Comments

[Wingwire]

To make it open instead of close, simply put the tab on the left side, putting the hinge on the top part. When you turn it, the iris should open from its closed neutral position.

[kelseymh]

In Step 4, you wrote, "Congratulations! There will be cake and grief counseling at the conclusion of this Instructable."

So where's the cake? Oh, wait....

[robertrunyon]

The cake is a lie.

[gordonfreemanisalive 23]

that's right,please read my indestructible.

[Kryptonite]

More importantly, where's that grief counseling?

[roomen]

Yeah i did it, made it just with paper and stick glue, only addition was to tape down the little flaps that go through the handle, else the flaps wouldn't stay in, works pretty good though.
Only thing i'm missing is a back piece to hide the other flaps.
Although the reason i made this one was because of the iris mechanism, i finally fully understand it :)

[kvnfln9000]

i figured out how to make it open but i am stillworking on modifing your design

it is going to work =)

[lilliu97]

ummm somethings gone wrong when i push down it closes and i cant push up

[drknotter]

Can you describe the problem in more detail? Are you sure you put the flaps through the holes in the correct order? The handle has to be in approximately the position that it's in in the first picture when putting the flaps through the holes

[TechKid67]

I would enjoy the opposite version as well where it opens when operating the lever.

[RollerScrapper]

I may have messed up since I didn't have all the holes marked, so it was nearly impossible to line up the little tabs, so I used brads, much easier! The only problem is it makes the card really thick. But at least it came together!

[drknotter]

Awesome! That looks great! How did you attach the brads to the eight thin pieces?

[RollerScrapper]

Brads are just tiny paper fasteners, and the head of the brad was large enough that i just poked the thin end through and folded the pieces out and the head stayed on the other side of the thin piece. You can get brads at any craft store, and it lessened the frustration because the paper method was just too difficult for me (probably due to my messy cutting at that point) :)

[Kryptonite]

Awesome! It's really cool to see when people actually make stuff, that turned out pretty neat.

[RollerScrapper]

This was a lot of fun, it really made me wish I had a laser cutter!
Now I want to make one with my friend's name because he is a photographer

[27-ton Artillery Walker]

awesome, just made one and used a glue stick. everything attaches well except for the top left corner of the front, but besides that, great intractable!

[drknotter]

Woot! Post a picture!

[RollerScrapper]

Great instructable! I see you are using double sided tape that comes off a roll. This step of gluing the back on might be easier if you get an adhesive tape roller at a craft store, the tape/glue part is narrower and it gets applied as you roll the tape on...this might make it much more precise application and then you won't have to cut off the excess tape.

[drknotter]

Interesting, I've never heard of such a thing. That would definitely make it easier to stick the pieces together.

[chuck_29]

this is genious, mr. johnson would be proud.