It’s being called ‘industrial origami’, and it’s a new technology for folding high-strength duplex stainless steel that could have a dramatic impact on the way vehicles are produced
The stainless steel sheet is made by cold rolling, a process similar to rolling out a thin sheet of pastry but on an industrial scale. The cold-rolling work hardens the material, and that is what makes it difficult to bend. Using lasers to heat the steel along the intended fold line with the extreme precision a laser can give makes it possible to fold the steel more easily into three-dimensional shapes.
Another important advantage of making structures out of stainless steel is that it doesn’t rust, so it doesn’t necessarily need painting and yet it still looks good. Avoiding painting reduces materials, production cost and, potentially, weight . There are design advantages, too. Beijer said the folding process “creates a really defined design DNA” with “beautiful surface meetings between concave and convex surfaces”. Stainless steel is flexible and fully recyclable and the structure is simple.
The fi rst prototype of the scooter, called the Stilride SUS1 , is ready, and the company says it will “challenge the traditional view of manufacturing through the use of robotic industrial origami to fold structures from a flat sheet of metal true to the material’s characteristics and geometric nature”.