Laurent made a scale model of a Brompton folding bicycle as a birthday present for his dad. This model is so detailed, it actually folds up, just like the real thing. The projects comes with a great story too.
“This year was my father 60th birthday. He had been talking a lot about how the Brompton folding bicycles were great so we decided to get him one (the logistics to get a custom Brompton to France is incredible : each bike being handmade in London – where I live, the delay can be up to 5 months between the moment you know what you want and the moment you get it). After having it made, I managed to take it to my parents’ home in France without him noticing. Problem : we were celebrating his birthday in Lisbon…
But here comes InstaMorph. After a friend showed me the material and how it worked and doing a couple small projects, I decided to give a try at modeling the bike : the idea was to not get to the Lisbon birthday party my hands empty. I drew some sketches of the bike by looking at pictures on the web, separating it in several parts. InstaMorph being InstaMorph, I soon realized that I could actually make some bits of mechanics with it… I eventually recreated all the folding mechanisms of the bike and got this pretty amazing result of a foldable model of a Brompton bike. Add a bit of acrylic paint to it and you get a wonderful present. It made it to the birthday party and has almost been as appreciated as the bike itself… :)”
That’s so awesome Laurent! Thanks for sending so many pictures of the build. It’s great how you were able to replicate the folding mechanisms as well. This project really shows off how InstaMorph can be a very functional modeling and prototyping material if you want it to be. It’s probably one of the best modeling examples using InstaMorph, next to the one of a human ear.