Oragami Rubber Band Gun

Oragmi is a great way to bring ideas to life. It is all about experimenting, finding the right colors, the right shapes and dimensions. However oragami can be very wasteful, some trails can use 10s of paper sheets that may all be thrown about but that is the fun of.

A solution could be to use 3d modelling softwares like 3ds max or blender to attempt to plan out our oragami master piece. Yes it may be difficuly, specially with shapes that has a lot of turns but it is a great way to imagine things before making them a reality that you can proudly present to all your friends. It is also a great way to know exactly what you need like how many pieces of paper and folded in what way etc.

Today we are going to be moddling and then creating an oragami paper gun that can shoot rubber bands. We will decide what folds/ shapes and the colors we will use, things that are easy to make with paper, model it and then create it out of papers.

1. 3Ds max
2. A small Glue stick
3. Tape
4. A Pencil
5. A4/letter paper (colored if prefered)
6. Hot glue gun
7. A pair of scissors
8. Rubber bands
9. Scewer

Most paper guns are made using paper tubes. The tubes can vary in size depending on the object we will wrap the paper around. So we will load up our 3d software and make different tubes with different sizes.

Make sure they ressemble reaility as much as possible.

For example: A4 papers are 210mm x 297mm so your tube should not be longer than 297 if you want half a piece then half of the and so on. they also should not be thick; paper is not thick.

Now let us model the basic shapes we will need. These will set the base of our gun. try to visuallize what you want your gun to look like. you can follow as I do to get a feel of how it works so you can do it with your own ideas later.

The images include the dimensions and the shapes I will use. we will ulter them or build new one as we go when we need them.

Note: if you think that the dimensions are too small to be able to work with in 3ds max you can multiply by a scale factor. a 10mm x 10mm x 10mm cube would be 100mm x 100mm x 100m. this is just to keep the right proportions.

I will be multiplying everything by 100 except for the heights which will be mulitplied by 10 for easier working and visibility.

By now you should have an idea of what you want to do. I will be making a shotgun for this to tutorial.

Step 1: stick four of the long tubes togeather to make the shape similar to that of the image. Group the 4 sticks togeather

Tip: use angle snaps

Step 2: for the barrel take one of the midium height pieces and stick it to the bottom of the our 4 tube structure.

Step 3: add one of the shortest piece on top of that, as if it is wrapped around it (you should make this piece a little thicker, the above dimensions already do that if you are following along.

step 4: for the handle we take one of the midium hueght pieces, and split it in half. so the height should be 742.5mm.

Take the piece and align it just as the image.

Step 5: Connect to add edges and move the top edge to match the lenght of the 4 cylinders

Step 6: Select the top edges and scale down until the hole clothes

Step 6: Copy the handle and rotate 90° and insert in between the two rows

Step 7: Shorten the handles until they match

Step 8: Use a plane with an edit poly modifier to model a handle around the tubes.

Pro tip: Alt + x to make the object transparent so you can see what is behind the plane

Step 9: The trigger get one of the half wide tubes and move the edges to create a slope just like the image

Step 10: Get a qaurter of the long tube and model it with an edit poly modifier to make the trigger cover

Now that we have the 3d model we have decided on a general shape. we found how much paper we need and what colors we need. We figuered out how to assemble it.

NOW IT IS TIME TO MAKE OUR ORAGAMI

In this step we are going to prepare the tubes, just like we used in 3ds max.

To prepare the narrow tubes. Get and HB pencil, place it at the very edge of the paper and roll the paper around it.

Note: use a scewer to get the pencil out. we will need 5 of these

To prepare the wide tube, take a paper on the short side, place the small glue stick and roll the paper over it. We will need 2 of these (if you do not have a glue stick or yours is too big you could use the body (the 4 rolls) we will be making in the next step to make this roll.

To prepare the short wide tube. bend the paper in half and then use the wide paper roll. We will need 2 of these.

Take the 4 long rolls and tape them togeather. make sure to leave a space at the back so you can attach the handle later on.

take one of the wide long rolls and cut it in half equally. and bend them like in the image.

stick them to the back of the body as shown in the image. Use the hot glue gun

Take two piece of paper and fold each 3 times starting on the short edge like in the image and stick each one to one side of the handle. tab is preffered but hot glue also works. after the fold you could cut to make it the appropriate size

take one of the short wide tubes and stick it using hot glow at the tip of the gun

take one of the long wide tubes and stick one of the short wide tubes over it. stick it to the body just bellow the tip.

take the last long tube and cut it to 3 apporximatily eqaul piece

for the first piece bend like the images , cut to make an edge

take the second piece and bend it like the imaget. stick at the top

take a rubber band and hot glow it to the back of the trigger

to shoot simply take a rubber band attach it from the top part of the trigger and scope looking piece at the top