Month: September 2019

How to make a fully functional Magnetic Origami Rubik’s Cube
Designed by Jo Nakashima (09/2019)
Difficulty level: Intermediate

This is a modular origami and each cube is made from a single sheet of paper. The “stickers” are also origami units, all connected without glue.

To make it fully functional, I’ve attached magnets inside the cubes using double sided tape. If you prefer pure origami, see the first version (static).

Paper

I recommend using 9cm x 9cm origami paper. If you use larger sizes, the cube will be difficult to handle. This is the number of sheets you’ll need:

• 27 sheets for the cube units (black)
• 6 sheets for the “sticker” units (red, blue, green, yellow, white and orange)

Magnets

I’ve tried a variety of Neodymium magnets. I’m not sure if these are the optimal sizes, but worked for this project:

• 6mm diameter x 3mm thick = 12 units
• 5mm diameter x 1mm thick = 96 unit

If you don’t know where to get magnets, check out the replies in the first comment on my video to find links to different stores around the world.

The larger magnets connect the core unit to the center units of each side. They are stronger because they’re not supposed to be disconnected, they just need to allow the rotation.

Make sure you keep track of the polarity of the magnets before taping them to the paper. Pay close attention to the video because the magnetic origami Rubik’s Cube won’t work if you don’t position them correctly.

Helpful Videos

To make each cube you’ll need to fold a 5×5 grid on every sheet of paper. In the tutorial I show the “origami way” to do that, without a ruler or any kind of tool. However, there are easier methods and the videos below can help you in this task:

To cut the rectangles for the stickers units I recommend this paper cutter:

How to make the origami Diabolical Cube Puzzle
Designed by Jo Nakashima (09/2019)
Difficulty level: simple

The origami Diabolical Cube is a puzzle similar to the SOMA Cube. It consists of six different pieces that can be assembled into a 3x3x3 cube. According to Wikipedia, it appears to be the oldest puzzle of this type, first appearing in an 1893 book Puzzles Old and New by Professor Hoffmann.

The puzzle has 13 different solutions, if mirrored pairs of solutions are not counted as being distinct from each other.

The origami is pretty easy to make and it only uses the basic cube unit and connections like in the origami Tetris Blocks.

Paper

In this tutorial I’m using 12cm x 12cm origami paper per cube (27 cubes in total).

Helpful videos

To make the Diabolical Cube Puzzle you’ll need to fold a 5×5 grid on every sheet of paper that you’ll use. In the tutorial I show the “origami way” to do that, without a ruler or any kind of tool. However, there are easier methods and the videos below can help you in this task:

How to make an Origami SOMA Cube Puzzle
Designed by Jo Nakashima (07/2019)
Difficulty level: simple

The SOMA Cube is a puzzle invented by Piet Hein in 1933. It has seven different pieces made from cube units that must be assembled into a 3x3x3 cube (and a variety of other shapes).

My origami version of this puzzle is a modular model and each cube is made from a square sheet of paper and connected without glue nor tape.

Paper

To fold this origami you’ll need 27 square sheets of paper with the same size. I’m using 12cm x 12cm in the video tutorial.

Diagrams

Diagrams are not available yet. Watch the video to learn how to make it!

More shapes

There are hundreds of different shapes that you can assemble with the SOMA cube. You can see below 40 sample shapes that you can try. I recommend you visit Thorleif’s SOMA page for more info and different figures.

Random SOMA Puzzle selector

You can also use the video below to select a random puzzle to solve. Play the video and hit pause to select one of the 40 figures:

Helpful videos

To make the origami SOMA Cube Puzzle you’ll need to fold a 5×5 grid on every sheet of paper that you’ll use. In the tutorial I show the “origami way” to do that, without a ruler or any kind of tool. However, there are easier methods and the videos below can help you in this task:

More origami models with cubes

On my YouTube Channel you can find a playlist with all my models based on the origami cube. Check it out for action models like the Moving Cubes and also puzzles like the Rubik’s Cube.

How to make Origami Tetris Blocks (Tetrominoes)
Designed by Jo Nakashima (07/2019)
Difficulty level: simple

Tetris is a video game created by russian software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984 (wikipedia). In this game, the player should make lines by positioning differently shaped pieces (the tetrominoes), which descend onto the playing field. There are seven different tetrominoes (or five, if you don’t count the mirrored ones).

I created the origami Tetris Blocks from my basic origami Seamless Cube. You can connect the cubes side by side to form the tetrominoes using its tabs and pockets.

Paper

In this tutorial I’m using 12cm x 12cm sheet of origami paper per cube. You’ll need 4 cubes for each Tetris Block.

Helpful videos

To make the origami Tetris blocks you’ll need to fold a 5×5 grid on every sheet of paper that you’ll use. In the tutorial I show the “origami way” to do that, without a ruler or any kind of tool. But the videos below can help you in this task:

More origami from cubes

There are many ways to connect the cubes and make different models, such as the Rubik’s Cube, the SOMA Cube Puzzle and the Moving Cubes. See my playlist on YouTube with all my cube based origami.