The Origami Forum

Dear All,

Hope you’re doing well and keeping safe

Hello! I am Varun Sai Koruprolu from Hyderabad, India. I am a Second-year Undergraduate Product design student from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. I am an Origami enthusiast and have been exploring it for a couple of years now.

This message is regarding my Design project at my college that I’ll be working on for the next 6-8 weeks. I am broadly focusing on Origami as my domain. The brief I chose is to make a simple tool that can help origami artists during the process of folding which would not involve any technology. It’s going to be a simple product that can be used by anyone (aiming for a low-budget product). I’d be grateful if you could help me with it. I intend to contribute something to the beautiful community we have


These are some questions that would help my research at this phase of my project:

What would that one phase or step of folding you would want to omit or think is redundant?
Referring to my question 1; Do you think that one particular step affects your physical self or inhibit you from creating and experimenting more? If yes, what do you do in that situation?
Are there any tools that already exist in the market that I am not aware of (apart from the Bone folder and other basic tools)? If yes, please do share them with me.
Referring to question 3; Do you think the existing tools are enough or would you want more?

If you own a Vinyl cutter/Cricut/Plotter,
What other features would you want your device to perform?
& What do people who do not own a machine generally do to perform similar tasks as the machines do?

Waiting for your reply. Hoping to keep in touch with you during the course of this project and post that as well

You can reach out to me either here or the contact details mentioned below. Thank you for your time in advance.

Contact Details:
Phone no: [Deleted by Moderator]
Email ID: [Deleted by Moderator]
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/varunsaikoruprolu/



Warm Regards,
Varun Sai Koruprolu
Product Design | Second year
National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad
Phone: [Deleted by Moderator]

Hi Varun.
First off, I edited your post to remove the email and phone number. I don't mean to keep people from contacting you--only to keep spammers from contacting you.

In regards to your questions, the most tedious part of folding for me is precreasing. Since there's really no way around it, I usually either force myself to power through or simply let the model sit until I have motivation to go on. Unfortunately, automatic precreasing requires a laser scoring machine, which is too expensive for the vast majority of folders.
One other theoretical tool that would be useful is an adjustable square or hexagon template. Making a template would be easy--making it adjustable, on the other hand, would be a challenge.

I can't think of any more advanced tools that are used already, but I wish you luck on your project!

There used to be these wonderful little paper cutters made by a company in Denmark, I think. They were envelope openers, but they cut paper perfectly. They aren't made anymore. If you want a real helper, get your hands on one of these, reverse engineer it and sell it. You'll help more folders more than just about anything else you can do.

steingar wrote: ↑March 12th, 2021, 5:11 pm There used to be these wonderful little paper cutters made by a company in Denmark, I think. They were envelope openers, but they cut paper perfectly. They aren't made anymore. If you want a real helper, get your hands on one of these, reverse engineer it and sell it. You'll help more folders more than just about anything else you can do.

Those were originally from the Netherland, right?

I agree, it is an excellent tool.

As much as I'd love the envelope openers to get into production again, I have to issue a warning. They had a patent pending. No idea whether they ever got it but you might get into troubles if just copy their design. According to the embossed text on the envelopeners they were made in Holland (so yes, Netherlands).

Ben Parker is working on the envelopener. He said the patent expired.

Yes, the patent has lapsed. See https://patents.google.com/patent/NL880 ... oq=8802638

A few 3D printed versions exist. Here's one that uses a standard #11 scalpel blade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgzzEfWcGfA

Thank you so much for taking out time to answer all my questions. This was very helpful