Idling Time Machines Origami Tessellation Design : Origami Tessellations

Idling Time Machines Origami Tessellation Design

While I was in the throes of trying to solve someone else's tessellation, I came up with this design in the process.

It's one of those tightly packed kinds of folds that is a pain to execute, but it's a pretty cool pattern.

That's what I love most about solving other designer's tessellations. It often leads to inspiration and new ideas.

This fold starts with open back hexagons. They are connected to small hex twists in a rather unorthodox manner. This creates the right triangles that are the main feature of the design.

It feels a little familiar, but I'm not sure if I've seen or done this exact fold before or just similar ones.

The reverse view shows the two kinds of hex twists used. But the true secret to folding this is kind of hidden in the structure. The twists of the small hexes tuck into each other.

Where the folds of a normal small hex twist would just twist all in the same direction, in this case they twist into each other and overlap.

It's an interesting study in how simple changes to technique can create new designs.

I did later solve the original tessellation that I was working on, but I have not folded it yet. That's a post for another day.

Crease pattern for this tessellation is included below. It's a little sloppy, but I believe it still gets the basic point across.

Comments

Infinite Triangles Origami Tessellation

This is just a flash idea I had. There was no planning involved. No inspiration. I just started folding and followed the lure of the creases in the paper. Upon seeing the finished result, It kind of reminds me of Robin Scholz's Triphilia tessellation, but the construction is definitely different and I was not thinking of that as I was crafting it. The similarity is that you can arrange the layering of the triangles into different patterns of your choice. I went looking and discovered I had folded this a few years ago and called it Triangle Temptations . I didn't realize this until after I'd completed this model. Apparently, according to my original post, I'd seen someone else fold it on flickr and recreated it. This happens sometimes. You hit on an idea and it's something you've done and forgotten. They linger in the back of your brain and come forward unexpectedly. That previous version differed from this one slightly, in that it used double sized cross g

Micro Rhombus Stars Origami Tessellation

This tessellation is micro rhombus star twists. I'm pretty sure I've seen this done with larger size rhombuses, but not with ones this size. They are the smallest natural rhombuses of the triangle grid. The center is achieved by collapsing a small hexagon. On the other side there are small hex twists and open back triangle twists. Since the shapes are rather small, it's a little bit difficult to fold. It's probably more of a cool weather tessellation. Humidity does the paper no favors on such small designs. But the ideas come when they do. Reverse view and crease pattern images follow.

What If Caviar Could Talk Variant

This origami tessellation is a variant of one by Arseniy K. He named his 'What If Caviar Could Talk'. After I had solved his design, I decided that I wasn't up to reproducing it exactly as he had folded his. Perhaps another time, in the future. So I changed things up a little to make it slightly less difficult. Both designs have a foundation of open back hex twists with triangle twists around them, He used micro rhombuses between the repeats. In my case, I used larger natural rhombuses instead. Still a difficult fold to execute, but much less so. It still required thick paper. I used tant folded into a 32 pleat triangle grid. You can see from the photo of the reverse side how densely packed everything is. It's a few layers deep. So be prepared to wrestle with that. My crease pattern for this iteration is included at the end. To fold his, sub out small natural rhombuses in place of my larger ones.

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