Bridge: File-Folder Bridge Construction

Over the last few weeks, I have learned how to build a bridge made out manilla folders. This project involved cutting out pieces of the manilla folders, cutting out pieces to form beams, and gluing all of the pieces together. I learned a lot about the best type of team dynamics during this project. My team was incredibly quick and efficient due to our ability to multitask through the project. Since there were five of us working on the project, it was inefficient for all of us to work on the same part of the bridge. During this project, I worked a lot of keeping the multiple parts of the bridge moving forward by looking ahead and seeing what each of my subgroups could do while waiting for the second subgroup to finish. For example, at the beginning of the bridge, I had one group laying out all of the stationary pieces of the bridge while I worked with the other group to create the beams that we decided to cut out on the laser cutter. I decided to bring up using the laser cutter because of the accuracy and time efficiency of the laser cutter. The laser cutter took some initial time investment because Sara, a group member, and I had to design all of the pieces and figure out the correct laser setting so it would cut through the paper, but not catch on fire. Originally, we just had the laser cut out the outlines of the support beams, but about halfway through the cutting I learned how to add fold lines using the color mapping so that we could already have a fold in the pieces; therefore, we only had to glue the second batch of beams together. This eliminated a lot of human error in measurements and was more time efficient. While Sara and I worked on the cutting and after the other part of the group laid out the pieces, I had the start gluing the pieces together. This was to ensure that all members of our team had constant work so we constantly were making forward progress. For this reason, we finished days earlier than any of the other groups. I have included some of the files we used to create the bridge pieces on a combination of Inkscape and Corell Draw. Additionally, the bridge plans that we used as instructions are attached as files at the bottom of the page.

Bridge Test Video

Result: Are bridge was able to hold most of the weight but cracked under the weight of the final book. Our bridge was able to hold about 5kg of weight.