The new “Y-zipper,” a three-sided fastener #3dThursday

A three-sided zipper sketched out in nineteen eighty-five and stored in a garage for four decades is finally getting its day. MIT researchers have revived William Freeman's once-rejected patent and engineered an automated version called the Y-zipper. Per Adafruit, the CSAIL team uses three-D printing and custom software to build these fasteners, which let items like chairs, tents, and purses flip between rigid and flexible states—making them easier to pack and put together.

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