Make the Raibow PHiZZ Origami Buckyball!

I like PHiZZ origami.  There's just something satisfying about the geometric shapes you can make those simple little folded squares.  The one thing I wasn't happy with are the colors available.  That's right... the nearly infinite variety of origami paper just isn't infinite enough for me :-)  I decided to print my own paper with a continuous 'color-sphere'.  

I used the happy coincidence that we have the same number of color dimensions as we have spatial dimensions, and mapped the coordinates of the XYZ bucky-sphere vertexes into the RGB color space.  After much futzing and fooling around and came up with a software program that produces a PDF with the proper gradients to produce the rainbow bucky you see here.

I used the wide-format printer and laser cutter at the TechShop to print and cut the pieces.  You can use a 24" printer, or I've also included an 8.5x11" PDF to make at home.  I made this at the TechShop.  

Materials Required:

• Plain (i.e. NOT photo!) paper for your printer.  The photo paper is too thick.  Use the best paper/ink combination for getting vibrant colors on your printer.

Tools Required:

• An inkjet printer.  I tried a color laser, but the 'ink' flakes off when creased.  Maybe newer lasers are better in that regard.
• A laser cutter (e.g. from TechShop), or a rotary paper cutter/trimmer.  IMO, the guillotine types are totally worthless for anything but removing fingers.  They have a no ability to cut precise lines, especially on a stack of paper.  If using a laser cutter, a cutting template is included.  If using manual cutter, crop lines are included in the files.

Patience Required:

• Much

Update:  I just made the software available on google code, so go ahead and make your own size!

Step 1: Download the files and print. Both Sides

Now, it's time to print out your PHiZZ squares.  If you don't know how the PHiZZ widgets work, please take a look on the interwebs or here or here for how to fold and assemble the PHiZZ units.
 
Even though you nominally only see one side of each square, you'll want to print both sides.  The reason for this is that you can actually see little slivers of back side in the assembled product, and seeing the un-inked, white backside is no fun.  See that attached image for the difference  

So, download either the buckyball.zip or dodecahedron.zip.

If you're using the buckyball, and a standard 8.5x11 paper, print the file called, "buckyball_8.5x11_front.pdf".  Or if you're using 24" roll paper, then print with buckyball_24x14_front.pdf.

Be sure to set your print settings to NOT SCALE the image.  Or scale it by a specified amount.  You need all pages to have the same scale on the way out.

In either case, once you're done, you need to print the back sides.  I've already taken into account the left-right offset and reversal of the image.  You load the paper back into the printer so that the back of page 1 gets printed first, and then print the XXX_back.pdf image.

I suggest trying this out on your local inkjet to understand how it works before you try it out on a large format printer.

Comments

[Gorloth]

I folded up the buckyball and it was quite fun to fold, although it was a bit small. One of your images has a larger buckyball, any chance of getting the gradient files for that? or even better would be to see the script used to generate that, would be fun to make some larger ones.

[ccrome]

Okay Gorloth, now you have the BIG ONE :-) It's in the downloads now. Also, check out the google code link here for the software: https://code.google.com/p/rainbow-phizz-origami-buckyball/downloads/list.

Please post a photo of your creations :-)

[Gorloth]

finally got the time to finish the 360 unit buckyball http://www.flickr.com/photos/origamibucket/8728370781/in/photostream thanks for the cool script, it was a lot of fun to fold, now I'm tempted to tweak the gradients for other units, or maybe map out the co-ordinates for a 555 torus.

[ccrome]

Hey, that's totally awesome! Where would you get said coordinates for the torus? That's some serious folding :-) I really want to see that.

[ccrome]

Great! I'll post up some more stuff. I'm glad to see somebody else who made it :-) I need to get the code out again and run it, but it should all work. Perhaps I'll just post it on google code or something so people can make modifications themselves :-)

Maybe I can do it later today if I remember when I get home.

[JoeTheMediocre]

Looks really cool! It would be neat to see the script (even if it's not terribly finished) or your calculations. Thanks for sharing!

[ccrome]

Okay, here you go! https://code.google.com/p/rainbow-phizz-origami-buckyball/downloads/list

[ccrome]

Script is in python and can be modified for other shapes that have 3 edges per vertex. (like other bucky things). The code won't work for other shapes, but some python/origami hacker can certinaly make it work.

-Caleb

[rimar2000]

What a good work!

Nice instructable.