3D-Printed Kirigami Cylinders Morph on a Rotary Printer

3D-printed kirigami cylinders can snap from a stiff tube into a softer vase without swapping filament. On August 27, 2026, 3DPrint.com covered Deakin and SeoulTech work in Progress in Additive Manufacturing: a Snapmaker 2.0 A350 rotary module printed TPU meta-cylinders on a mandrel. For a STEM lab, the lesson is geometry as a program — not that every CoreXY is now a lathe.

What's Happening

In 3DPrint.com’s report on Deakin’s rotary kirigami cylinders, the object is a tube you can program. Ali Zolfagharian and Moslem Mohammadi at Deakin University, with Eui-Hyun Kim and Keun Park at Seoul National University of Science and Technology, printed multistable “meta-cylinders” from a triangular kirigami cell. Pull the tube in tension and the lattice snaps through. The middle bulges. The ends stay tighter. The as-printed shell is comparatively stiff. The expanded shell is softer. Stack closed and expanded tubes on one axis and crush becomes a sequence: soft, then medium, then hard — same TPU, different states.

The printer is not a secret industrial lathe. It is a commercial Snapmaker 2.0 A350 with a rotary module, a 0.4 mm nozzle, 0.2 mm layers, and eSUN eTPU-95A at 100% infill. First three layers ran about 10 mm/s on the mandrel; then 25 mm/s at 220 °C. Geometry lived in Rhino 8 and Grasshopper. Cura sliced a flattened unwrap. A Python script turned planar X moves into B-axis rotation. No sacrificial supports. That is the manufacturing claim: hoop paths on a spinning shaft, not a staircase tube standing on a bed. 3DPrint.com is right to flag stents, actuators, and shock absorbers as candidate uses. The paper itself is a lab platform, not a cleared medical device.

Why 3D-Printed Kirigami Cylinders Matter for STEM Labs

Most student “metamaterial” prints are a flat auxetic coupon you stretch on a desk. A tube that has two mechanical lives is a better demo. You can show the closed cylinder under three-point bending, then the same lattice after a tension snap, and ask why the force curve went quiet. Diameter is the other knob: the team made three sizes from one cell family, with outer dimensions of about 29, 40, and 63 mm. Small closed shells carried more force. Large expanded shells traveled farther before they packed. That is a lab period with calipers, not a grant for a new polymer.

Keep the hardware split honest. Rotary FDM is a kinematic trick. You need a mandrel axis and a G-code remap. A school CoreXY with a glass plate will not reproduce the hoop bond they are selling. TPU 95A is also not nylon with a continuous tow. If the classroom also prints jigs that must not collapse, those parts want designed fiber, not a snap-through hinge. The interesting question for students is which job is a program in the lattice and which job is a load path in the filament.

How 3D-Printed Kirigami Cylinders Compare to Other Tubes

Approach	How the tube is made	Main trade-off
Planar kirigami sheet, then wrap	Print or cut flat; join into a cylinder	Seam; extra assembly; support waste on curves
Flat-bed FDM tube	Print standing or on its side on a Cartesian bed	Staircase on the curve; weak hoop direction
Rotary TPU meta-cylinder (this paper)	eTPU-95A on a Snapmaker rotary mandrel, support-free	Needs rotary hardware and cell design; TPU is not a stiff frame
Co-axial stack of closed + expanded tubes	Nest diameters and morphing states on one axis	Soft–medium–hard crush; more parts to print and align
Continuous-fiber energy-absorption tube	Designed tow around a cylinder that should stay stiff	Wrong process if you wanted a snap-through hinge

What the Research Says

Zolfagharian, Mohammadi, Kim, and Park printed three diameters of one kirigami lattice, then tested tension, three-point bending, and crush on single tubes and co-axial stacks. Finite-element and lab curves lined up on the first snap of the large cylinder: 5.51 N at 20.0 mm in simulation versus 5.72 N at 19.01 mm in the test. As-printed shells showed sharper snap-through in bending. Expanded shells were smoother and less stiff. In crush, closed small tubes sat in a higher force band (about 16–88 N in a 10–20 mm window in their summary) while large closed tubes sat lower (about 1.9–8.3 N). Co-axial stacks with an expanded outer tube started soft (about 1.6–2.7 N out to 30 mm) then climbed when an inner closed tube engaged, up toward 70 N. That is the “mechanical program”: morphology first, material second (Zolfagharian et al., 2026).

The cell idea is older than the rotary printer. Rafsanjani and Pasini built planar bistable auxetics from rotating units inspired by geometric motifs. Stretch them and they snap into a second stable shape and stay there after the load comes off — a geometric energy well, not a new rubber. The Deakin–SeoulTech tubes take that snap-through lattice, wrap it into a cylinder in software, and deposit it as a hoop instead of folding a sheet after the print (Rafsanjani and Pasini, 2016). If you teach the paper, start with a 2D bistable coupon. Then ask what the mandrel bought you: continuous circumference, fewer supports, and a crush stack you can mix by diameter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are 3D-printed kirigami cylinders?

They are TPU tubes printed on a rotating mandrel with a cut-and-fold lattice, so the cylinder can snap between a stiff closed shell and a softer expanded vase. Deakin and SeoulTech printed them support-free on a Snapmaker 2.0 A350 rotary module in eTPU-95A. Cell shape, wall thickness, and diameter set the snap, not a new filament.

Can I print rotary kirigami tubes on a normal desktop FDM printer?

Only if the machine has a rotary or lathe axis and you remap G-code so X becomes mandrel rotation. The paper used a Snapmaker 2.0 A350 with a rotary module, Rhino, Cura, then a Python script. A stock flat-bed CoreXY prints staircase layers around a hole. That is not a continuous hoop on a spinning shaft.

How do 3D-printed kirigami cylinders absorb energy?

As-printed tubes are stiffer and snap; tension-expanded tubes are softer and crush on a longer plateau. Nesting different diameters and states in a co-axial stack gave sequential soft-medium-hard collapse without changing TPU. Small closed tubes carried higher force. Large expanded tubes went farther before densifying.

Fibricate's Place in This Story

A snap-through TPU sleeve and a bracket that must not fold are different jobs on the same bench. Companies like Fibricate, whose FibreSeeker 3 continuous carbon fiber 3D printer lays thermoplastic with a continuous tow from feedstock such as the continuous carbon fiber spool, are not shipping a Snapmaker rotary profile or an eTPU-95A kirigami kit. Print fiber when the part is a jig, a clamp, or a frame that should keep its shape under a tool. Reach for rotary TPU when the lesson is a programmed hinge in a tube. One process hunts a load path. The other hunts an energy well in the lattice. Keep them on the same course module, not in the same G-code.

What to Watch Next

Watch whether other labs copy the unwrap–Cura–Python path on cheaper rotary add-ons, and whether anyone publishes fatigue life for repeated snaps — the paper is tension, bend, and crush, not a thousand-cycle helmet liner. Also watch the medical headlines: a tubular lattice that can change stiffness is a research cousin of a stent, not a device you put in a vessel. Over the next year, expect more “print on a shaft” papers that treat the mandrel as a materials saving, plus classroom kits that stop at a 2D auxetic and call it kirigami. The useful split is who programs crush with geometry and who still needs a stiff composite tube next to it.

References & Further Reading

1. Zolfagharian, A., Mohammadi, M., Kim, E.-H., & Park, K. (2026). Conformal morphing meta-cylinders 3D printing for mechanical intelligence programming. Progress in Additive Manufacturing.
2. Rafsanjani, A., & Pasini, D. (2016). Bistable auxetic mechanical metamaterials inspired by ancient geometric motifs. Extreme Mechanics Letters.
3. Deakin Researchers 3D Print Rotary Kirigami Cylinders. 3DPrint.com. Retrieved August 27, 2026.