We Built an Assembly Line…

We made a machine line and we used it to send out 80,000 gifts Last year I wanted to send a themed calendar to some fans Packing was easy fold a cardboard into a box put in the calendar and wood block close the lid, and ship it out The only issue?

I wanted to send out a few hundred which meant a whole week of packing So there I was, 2:30 am at the studio, folding boxes And I couldn’t help but think what if there was a machine that could fold these boxes automatically?

Then I could go home early and read a book Good news such machines already exist And if you can buy it there’s no need to DIY it So we asked for price We love DIY to the bottom of our hearts It's time to make a small assembly line So we made this A robotic arm grabs a piece of cardboard moves it forward and presses it down Two side arms lock the sides in place

That part was easy we took inspiration from existing designs But most commercial machines don’t close the lid So we had to figure that out ourselves Once the box is roughly folded the platform moves it forward and another mechanism quickly pushes the lid shut But here’s the tricky part how do you tuck this tiny flap into this slot?

At first we tried pushing the lid down but that flap kept bending outward and wouldn’t go in So we added a guide piece to nudge it inwards Still tiny size differences in the boxes caused failures Our final fix?

A spring-loaded guide on a movable air cylinder that adapts to each box size and gently pushes the flap in before the lid closes Success rate went way up But just closing the lid isn’t enough you’d still need to open it put things inside and close it again Totally pointless unless We added a robotic arm Now, once a box is folded it moves forward

and the arm drops in a calendar and wood block while the box isn’t looking Then it gets pushed along lid closed and done a fully packed box completely automatic You might ask “Isn’t folding by hand faster than building all this?”

Please don’t ask that question But still it looks pretty cool It can pack one box every 15 seconds That’s 1,000 in an afternoon Still there’s another problem the calendars cost money Sending tens of thousands would be way too expensive So we thought: what’s something meaningful we can send to everyone without breaking the bank?

Introducing our Assembly Line 2.0 This is a paper-folding machine we built It turns a flat sheet of paper into a paper dove a symbol of sky dream and ability to fly To fold this first step is picking up a single sheet from a stack Easy for humans hard for suction cups So we used a center-spinning wheel that first pulls one sheet back then forward into the rollers Step two: fold the paper First in half

then make a boat shape then press the tip down creating four crease lines Kind of tricky for people but for machines...

Next a robot arm picks up the papar move to the next step the steel blades on both sides fold along the creases with an extra one folding a small corner The rough dove shape is formed by more folds folding the paper again flipping the wings down — this is where it gets complex A robotic arm grabs the paper and feeds it into the Rollers Rollers flatten it then lift up the wings

Mold presses to make the creases A third arm grips and pulls the paper further for shaping This step always gives me headaches Now we reach the hardest part the head and tail Normally you’d pinch the paper by hand very tricky even for humans So what does our machine do?

Simple the robotic arm picks up the paper and places it into someone’s hand Just joking The arm places the paper down and then very fast the right mold punches down to form the head the left mold punches the tail and a cylinder clamps it all into shape swings to the end of the line And Boom a paper dove is born Here we slowed down the roller speed it actually looks like this

But a blank dove isn’t very meaningful So we added a machine at the start now we can print messages on each dove We even included a little stand so you can display it on your desk I wrote “new video” on mine as a reminder to hurry up Our engineer wrote “99%” his goal for machine accuracy Our producer?

wrote “Ana de Armas”for some reason So why did I do this?

I’ve always been a shy person I never raised my hand in class I’d rather use a vending machine than talk to a cashier Watching videos alone at home was my comfort zone In a weird way the people on screen often felt more familiar than the ones around me Then I started making videos myself And I’ve been lucky I got a lot of support When our channel hit 10 million followers in China

I wanted to do a giveaway But giveaways only reach a few lucky people I want more people to feel my gratitude This machine was our answer a way to turn cheap paper into something meaningful Why doves?

Because I often delay posting videos In Chinese it's called “pigeon-ing” the upload It became a meme about our channel We turned that meme into a real gift This was by far our hardest project We started in April 2023 spent 7 months folding the first dove and 2 more months making the machine reliable Every step took countless tests fails and fixes I doubted whether this was even possible

But when that first dove came out it was the happiest moment of my year We plannd to send out 100,000 paper doves all folded by our own machine here in our studio Thanks for watching our videos But here's one problem Sending one dove is easy Just fold a box put in the dove and a wood stand and ship it Only issue?

We had to do it 100,000 times So I couldn’t help but think what if there was a machine that could fold these boxes automatically?

Oh wait Hi, I’m Richard This video was posted in China in January 2024 Since then, we’ve shipped 88,000 doves for free and I'm really happy that our viewers get to receive them We’re now translating our videos for YouTube and in just a few months we’ve grown to 1,000,000 subscribers here Thank you so much We’re a DIY studio in China that makes werid stuff follow for more