Icosahedron · Apr 5, 12:41 PM

Inspired by the good folks at jeweledplatypus.org, who you may remember from This Post, I have constructed my own icosahedron. It’s simpler than the design form there, but it gives a more solid shape and was far easier to construct.


To begin, you’ll have to print out two of These and one of These to have a total of twenty modules. Cut them out on the solid lines. Fold the dotted lines as shown:




Borrowing diagram conventions from chemistry, the solid arrows represent a bend towards you and the dashed arrows represent a bend away from you. Once that’s done, tab A will be connected to B to give a complete pyramid (see below for photo).
Once you’ve made all of the pyramids, you need to connect them. Do this by bending one of the tabs of a pyramid over the underside edge of another pyramid and taping it there. make a chain of five pyramids and then connect the two ends together to make a ring. All of them will meet in the center forming a single vertex of the structure. This group of five is the seed from which the rest of the shape will grow. Notice in the image above that every side of the shape consists of exactly this motif.

Begin expanding off that group of five (green in left image) by first choosing two side by side pyramids. To each of those two, attach a new pyramid (blue). Between those two new pyramids, add a third one (red) that has one side connected to each of the two previously added ones. This creates another group of five, of which two members are also in that first group of five. Repeat this procedure to make two structures like that shown to the left.
You will now have four sides complete, two sets of two sides, each containing eight pyramids. With the four pyramids left unused, attach two together and repeat, giving you two sets of two that look like little bird beaks (you could at this point give up and just use these as hand puppets, actually).
To the right you see the four structures you should have now constructed:

Going back to those two sets of eight that you made (lower left and upper right in previous image), look at them from the angle they are shown in the image, so that you have two pyramids each pointing straight off to the sides, four pointing at 45 degree angles, and two at the center pointing up and down. Connect the pyramids sticking out to the sides of each group, so that pyramid A in the image below will connect to pyramid B, and Pyramid C will connect to Pyramid D.

This results in essentially the final structure. Two gaps are present, a diamond shaped hole at the top and the bottom. Into these, place those two bird beaks. This is a tricky part, and it may be easier to use elmers glue on the tabs than to try to reach inside and use tape.

— Alexander J. Hartman

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Comment

  1. Such a nice post, it is really interesting, want to admire your work, Thanks.

    — Term Papers · Dec 11, 11:28 PM · #

  2. Making something ables our mind to do such things which we not done yet.

    — Term Papers · Jan 4, 04:07 AM · #

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