- Empty cart.
- Continue Shopping
Living hinges are used to create flexible and bendable parts in laser cutting. They work by removing enough material to make a design flexible and bend without breaking. It’s tricky because if you remove too much material it will break. Not enough and it won’t bend. But once you get the right balance you can create some amazing laser cut projects.
Living hinges can be used in all sorts of designs. Boxes, earrings, lamps shades, stands, are just a few examples. These projects typically use living hinges in the shape of a rectangle to make the hinge. But what if you want to make something more complex?
This is where Stepa, reddit user St_Drunks, comes in. They created a living hinge generator to make the process of incorporating living hinges easier! Using an algorithm, Stepa made a generator to create complex shapes such as living hinge loops.
Here’s some examples of what Stepa made with the generator.
The generator is built for Rhino 3D software. If you don’t know what that is, you can learn more about it here. You can get a 90 day free trial but it will cost you $995 for a license of if you are a student you can get it for $195.
If you already have a version of Rhino 3D but it is an earlier version than Rhino 7, you will need to download the Grasshopper plugin. Unfortunately, I’ve never used Rhino 3D but here’s a link to how to install a plugin and use Grasshopper.
Once you are setup with Rhino you can grab the generator from GitHub here.
Here’s the reddit post if you want to join in on the conversation! Do you use Rhino 3D? Have you tried the living hinge generator plugin? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts on this plugin. Let’s help Stepa keep this project alive!
