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Waving Paper Doll FAIL

linkage mechanical card

Here are some pictures of the pull tab mechanism I tried for the waving paper doll card. In the end it was a big fail. I never did get the pull tab to work to my satisfaction.

It's a double version of a linkage from Rob Ives' book, Paper Engineering and Pop Ups for Dummies.

You can see a picture of the linkage here.

I originally tried the mechanism with these T-shaped linkages.

linkage mechanical card

linkage mechanical card

I didn't like the angle of the arms and legs so I switched to a tilted T.

linkage mechanical card

linkage mechanical card

linkage mechanical card

The red piece is the push/pull tab. When the tab is pushed up and down the yellow and blue linkage strips move the arms and legs.linkage mechanical card

linkage mechanical card

I thought this would work, except I wasn't happy with the way the one arm crashed into the (yellow) linkage.

linkage mechanical card

And the body had to be way too fat to cover up the holes. At this point I cut my losses and made the card without the pull tab.

linkage mechanical card

waving paper doll mechanical card

Extreme Cards and Papercrafting: pop up cards, movable and mechanical cards, digital crafts and unusual papercrafts.