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Well, not paper, exactly, but you get the idea!

So, I'd had this idea of making a print that would unfold after printing, into a chain much longer than the original build size, and the snowflake seemed an excellent place to try that! There were some challenges - read on!

But first, what is this?

So, this is an entry in the BlocksCAD snowflake contest, which means that the model was created entirely from code written in BlocksCAD. What's more, it's constructed in a parameterised way, so that things like the number of snowflakes in the chain can be altered, and a new model produced automatically.

But yes, a paper chain! The chain prints folded, standing up, in a compact box shape. It's entirely assembled, with hinges ready to swivel and unfold.

Challenges

Most obviously, the hinge is the tricky thing, here. Now, a hinge isn't a difficult thing to design, even one that prints in-place like this. Where the tricky bit comes in is making an offset hinge printable despite being in mid-air.
If you take a look at the model, you'll see that the hinge is all made up of angles that slope upwards, and horizontals are avoided. What might be less obvious is that the hinge strut that extends from the snowflake body to the bottom of the hinge pin not only supports the pin for printing, but prevents the upper hinge pin attachment from taking too much force if there's friction in the hinge. I have to say, I really had a lot of fun designing this :D

Visual design considerations

I originally had the snowflake panel much more complicated, but it really detracted from the overall chain. So, I kept it simple, bold, and iconic, and the chain looks much more coherent as a result.
However! If you want to fiddle with the snowflake panel in the code, it's all managed by the "build snowflake core" module, so it's easy to do!

Where to from here?

Well, beyond this particular snowflake thing, there's plenty of scope to extend this to different shapes, and to customise the sequence of flakes with letters to form messages - cheesy Valentines heart chain messages, here I come! Have fun :)