Cardboard Stool

This is an 18x18 inch stool made entirely out of cardboard, using only 3 pieces, and can support a person's full weight. The stool uses no connectors like tape, glue, nails, staples, etc., and relies only on tabs and other cardboard construction techniques, meaning cardboard is the only material in use. The full scale stool is made from C-Flute cardboard.

C-Flute Cardboard (For full scale)

X-Acto Knife/Box Cutter

Pencil

Ruler

T-Square

Use the Sheet Metal feature of Autodesk Fusion 360 to create the model of the stool so that you can then unfold it into a 2D pattern, and then use that to inform your net creation.

Use e-flute cardboard to explore the form and scale of the stool, the properties of cardboard, and understand how the different elements of the stool come together. You can use joinery like tape in this step to aid overall assembly exploration, and this will also help later inform which parts of the stool needs tabbing to join. This exploration also helps rectify any issues with shape, dimensions, scale, or proportions.

Strategically cut the cardboard to unfold it into a 2D sheet. This gives you a view of the net that could be created to fold the cardboard into a 3D shape like a stool. I used Autodesk Fusion 360's Sheet Metal functionality to create the cad, meaning I could then unfold the model using the software itself. I then rebuilt the net on Illustrator (by exporting the .dxf from Fusion 360), and added tabs. This net is the basis of the project, and is what will be cut out of cardboard to assemble the stool.

The final stool can support a person weighing 200 pounds and possibly even more! What's important to remember when making the inner support structure of any cardboard stool is to have triangular structures, which support the most stress.