Origami Press - Octagonal Box

With an inexplicable interest in the intersection between origami and 3D printing, it was inevitable that, sooner or later, we would stumble across Camilo Cortes's delightful offering. Combining that with mathgrrl's origami presses, which seem to successfully simplify life for those of a lazy bent (or at least afflicted with fumbling fingers), we proudly present a set of plates suitable for embossing (and trimming) sheets of paper in preparation to folding the otherwise rather tricky octagonal origami gift box.

A standard A4 sheet of paper has dimensions of 297mm x 210mm - it is probably not a coincidence that the bed of many a Prusa printer (including our Mk4S) also measures 210mm in the Y direction. So we recreated the template parametrically in FreeCad, according to the dimensions in this video, with the ridges and corresponding slots dimensioned similarly to those used by mathgrrl to create the required mountain and valley folds.  The parametric design now makes it trivially simple to change the target paper size, so in addition to the maximal A4 press, also find a smaller version, for A5 sheets (or for making two tiny boxes from a single A4 sheet).

Printing:

Print one each of BoxPressA4_1 and BoxPressA4_2 (being the bottom and top plates respectively), or the A5-sized versions, if you prefer it smaller.  It should also work when scaled by up to a few tens of percents up or down, if you desire to tweak the size slightly.

Printed in PLA at 0.2mm layer height through a 0.4mm nozzle. PETG will most probably also work well. Our personal preference is for Concentric infill on the bottom layer, but that is of course optional. Just be sure that everything is solid - the plates are nominally 1.5mm thick, so that does not use much material.

How to use:

Place a sheet of paper on the bottom plate. It should fit snugly between the ears. Then fit the top plate, ridges and grooves facing down, making sure that it too engages the slots on both sides of the bottom plate. With the resultant sandwich on a smooth and hard surface, press the top plate firmly down by rubbing it all over with as much force as you can muster with your fingers. Or you can try using a rolling pin. Before removing the paper, trim it to a circular shape by running a sharp blade (hobby knife or scalpel) all around the plates. Alternatively, you can run a pencil around the plates, remove the paper, and then cut out the circle using scissors. If everything was done correctly, you should have clearly embossed the paper with the mountain and valley folds needed. Now fold your box as shown near the end (at the 6:33 mark) of the video we already referenced:

https://youtu.be/cPoErl0ZSUk?t=393

We have found that somewhat heavier paper (120 g/m²) works slightly more easily, at least in my inexperienced (w.r.t. origami) hands, though normal 80 g/m² is also perfectly fine. The bigger problem is that I do not really have a need or desire for all these octagonal paper boxes, yet I seem unable to help myself.