Kaleidocycles: amazing dynamic papercraft

An easy, fun, and unique paper construction project.

What is a kaleidocycle?

A three-dimensional ring, composed of a series of linked tetrahedra (pyramids). This papercraft design is truly unique due to its dynamic capability: the ring is able to be twisted in upon itself!

Kaleidocycles are somewhat similar to kaleidoscopes: they are both optical, circular, and dynamic. A kaleidoscope is operated by rotating the end of a tube. A kaleidocycle is operated by twisting itself. If you have never seen a kaleidocycle before, you are in for a real treat.

Let's get started!

Step 1 Assemble materials.

Materials required:

~ 1 sheet of plain paper cardstock

~ Elmers glue

~ X-Acto knife (using a new blade is helpful)

~ straightedge ruler

Comments

[Win Guy]

I LOVE this! I'm subscribing. 5/5
Win Guy

[fixxon1972]

Funny enough i found a generator website for making kaleidocycles with your own photos.

You can make either a Hex or Oct one.

Hex kaleidocycles are a ring of 6 connected origami pyramids with 4 hexagonal faces.

and

Oct kaleidocycles are a ring of 8 connected origami pyramids with 4 square faces.

Below is link and a pic attached of a Kaleidocycle of 4 sportscars in 4 colours so you can see how made up.

foldplay.com/kaleidocycle.action

[aoife_abu]

Cool! Brilliant instructable dude.

[albino konijn]

damn, now siccors find somting cools to make easy with easy stuff and now i cant find my pair of siccors

[Lftndbt]

Nice work! How did you come up with that idea?

[kaleidocycles]

Thanks! I was inspired by the MC Escher book, which I read about 15 years ago; it was first published way back in 1977.

[impulse94]

I still have the original book somewhere. Some of them have Escher images on them.

[ahremsee]

I made one of these in my math class at school. Haven't seen any of these in 25 years. Great Instructable.