Practical Innovation: Wood That Bends and Folds by Snijlab

Snijlab is a Dutch digital manufacturing company that recently discovered a revolutionary method of making wood flexible. By using a laser cutting technique, they simply make various cuts in the wood, which make it bend in both directions without breaking. Here is more from the producers: “ We designed wooden booklets that use this feature. They’re made from a beautiful birch plywood and are finished with a clear varnish. The hard wooden cover can be opened fully to the back side for comfortable holding. A tiny clamp inside, made from the same material, holds a standard A7 writing block.Because a laser cutter is a fairly common tool products like this could be manufactured locally, all over the world. By working from sheet materials the products can also be flat-packed, saving even more resources and costs on shipping.For us this means we can make everything in-house and we don’t need to produce in big quantities to make it affordable. This is really the power of digital manufacturing and personal fabrication “. Do you find this idea practical?