All About Cardboard

Building and Making with Cardboard

Learn how to score, fold, cut, manipulate, and build with this abundant material, perfect for prototyping.

Why Do We Love Cardboard So Much?

In the lab, we always recommend making a chipboard or cardboard prototype during the design and fabrication process. These materials are quick to work with, abundant, and give us a great sense of the user interface of the object we'd like to create. We can rapidly design a model of our idea and have a sense of what that idea feels like in our hands. Is it the right size? Do we wish it were a different shape? What does the user think of it? Then we can quickly make some changes and iterate our design, or move on from there to further, more refined production on heftier equipment.

These materials are so easy to work with. Chipboard maintains its structure but can easily be cut with scissors. While you can purchase chipboard at any craft store, it's really the same as the material used in cereal, cracker boxes, frozen pizza packaging - almost anything in your pantry! Just save these items from your recycling and you will always have prototyping material on hand. Cardboard is even sturdier, but is a little harder to cut. In the Lab we typically use a ZipSnip, Canary Cutter, or Xacto knife when working with cardboard.

Take a moment to read some of the basics below and watch the videos on safely working with tools to manipulate cardboard and chipboard. Then follow along with the challenges to start creating all kinds of projects to build your skills and craftsmanship in working with this fine material.

Note: We are linking to the Amazon pages where we purchased these tools for the Innovation Lab. We are NOT saying you and your family need to purchase these items; we just want parents to have a sense of these items if students may mention how they've used them at school.

ZipSnip

Yellow Dot Tool

Amazon Product Page

Canary Cutter

Yellow Dot Tool

Amazon Product Page

Note: Mrs. Delia has tried out a serrated butter knife at home in place of a canary cutter and has learned it pretty much works just the same!

Crop-a-dile Punch

Green Dot Tool

Amazon Product Page

We have learned over the years that this tool is capable of punching a 3mm and 5mm hole - perfect size for the Mini LED lights we use in the lab - and is able to cut through birch plywood up to 1/8" thick.

X-acto Knife / Box Cutter

Yellow Dot Tool

Remember when working with an Xacto knife to use easy passes; you should never cut all the way through on the first pass. Your cuts will be cleaner and safer by pressing gently on your material. You can always go over your cut again. It should take you about 2 passes to score cardboard and 4 passes to cut all the way through. Never cut with your opposite hand under the path of the blade.

Corrugation: Not All Boxes Are Created Equal

A special guest contribution on the topic of cardboard from Jason Baker, current Hawken parent:

“At our factory, we use different types of corrugated cardboard depending on what is going inside the box. If the item is durable and doesn’t break easily, we use single-walled carboard. If the item is fragile and needs to be protected, like a light bulb, we will use a double-walled corrugated with packing peanuts surrounding the item. The double-walled box prevents the box from being crushed and the packing peanuts protect the items from moving inside and breaking.”

Corrugation refers to a quality of a material that has grooves or ridges. If you look at a piece of cardboard from the side, you will notice that it is really two thin layers of cardboard sheet covering a corrugated, or ridged sheet.

These corrugation ridges provide structure to the cardboard. They enable it to carry different weights and densities when used in shipping, or withstand different forces when used in construction and prototyping. They are part of what helps a 3D cardboard design stay standing without too many supports.

Take a look around your home at various pieces of cardboard. Do you notice differences in corrugation based on the "job" or "role" that box plays? If it's used for shipping light items, is the corrugation different than if its used for shipping heavy or glass items?

In the Lab, we have found a few insider tricks when working with cardboard and using corrugation:

Wider pitch (see the "A" flute diagram) cardboards create sharper cuts with finer craftsmanship - but are harder to cut with scissors
Thinner pitch (see the "F" flute diagram) may be cut easier with scissors and require less passes with an Xacto.
A coffee stirrer can fit between the grooves of an A, B, and sometimes C fluted cardboard... this is a great trick we use for securing multiple pieces of cardboard together without tape or glue. We also use this trick when building spinning automata.
Use corrugation ridges to guide a pipe cleaner through cardboard
Double corrugated cardboard is too hard to work with. Even with the ZipSnip it's just too hard to cut! This is typically used in shipping large, heavy items like refrigerators, helmets, camera equipment...

When you're building this week, pay attention to the "insides" of your cardboard and see which style you prefer working with, and think about why!

Bonus: Chipboard Collage Art

Create work inspired by artist and small business owner Michael Albert. Take your chipboard boxes from around your home and repurpose them into beautiful collage art.