Gunna Fold Em' All!

Principles of Engineering is our mechatronic class every Olin student takes, typically in their sophomore year. Here’s the breakdown…

• 8 weeks
• 4 design reviews, meaning 2 week sprint cycles
• $250 budget
• 5 teammates
• A glorious and painful way to learn system integration

What did we decide to engineer? A machine that could fold and launch its own paper airplanes. Some serious reddit post of a person making their own paper airplane machine inspired us to try this feat ourselves.

We have the whole project documented on our website, where we cover things like our process of testing different components in isolation, reflections on our integration pains, and even our bill of materials.

My only regret at the end of that fall semester was that we only made a paper airplane dispenser, and never had time to integrate a launcher module into the final CAD model. During that following winter break, I set out to rectify that regret.

I was pretty satisfied with the final product, for which the design was a direct inspiration from a YouTube video posted by a Dad who built the same launcher for his daughters at home to use. Our team ended up being invited to a community wide science fair to showcase our project, where we brought both the dispenser we made for the course and the launcher I had made during my free winter break – for all the children to enjoy :)