Compound of Five Tetrahedra
lasercut
polyhedra
attached svg file
This polyhedron is a glued-together set of five copies of a tetrahedron, going through each other
©Creative Commons wikimedia.org
Pictured here with every tetrahedron in a different colour. I used the same mode of colouring for the paper model.
Lasercutting #
The svg design (linked below) fills one A4 piece of paper (or A3, A2; scale it up to your needs), so we need five A4 sheets of different colours.
Each pattern piece is one tip.
Every five tips go together. For the first circle of 5 you can choose the colour order (but use all different colours).
Rules for assembly #
- Five tips go together in a circle. Not four, not six
- Among the five tips, use between one and two tips that have all tabs (1/4 of all tips have tabs on all edges)
- Keep the same colour for the same “big edge”. Explanation by picture:
The pencil is laying in one of the “big edges”. They are the edges of the underlying tetrahedron, here the pink one.
Note: you can see the yellow tip is the one that has tabs on all edges, where all the other tips don’t
Continue assembly and be careful about tabs on the tips. If you make errors, don’t worry and just cut away excess tabs or use a thin paper strip to “create” tabs.
Finished model. The last piece cannot be glued on all tabs, but pushing it on helps a little
This takes about 4h to assemble, 3h with previous experience (lasercutting is just 15min including setting up).
Try it yourself #
Download in vector format (infinitely scalable) here.
