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MIT CSAIL researchers have built a functional three-sided zipper called the Y-zipper, realizing a concept originally conceived by MIT Professor William Freeman in 1985, when his proposal was rejected by the Innovative Design Fund after he submitted it in response to a Scientific American advertisement offering up to $10,000 for textile and home decor prototypes. The device, developed by a nine-person team led by MIT postdoc Jiaji Li and senior author Associate Professor Stefanie Mueller, is published in the Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Funding details were not disclosed in the available materials.

The Y-zipper works by interlocking three flexible 3D-printed plastic strips through a triangular slider mechanism, transforming them from a loose, tentacle-like configuration into a rigid rod-like structure in a single motion. CSAIL paired the physical fastener with a custom software tool that lets users specify strip length, bend angle, and one of four motion profiles, including straight, arched, coiled, or twisted, before the system autonomously fabricates the zipper on a standard 3D printer. The team identified target applications across camping equipment, medical gear, robotics, and art installations, all contexts where rapid, reversible transitions between soft and rigid states offer practical value.

The current implementation uses plastic fabricated on a 3D printer, which limits material flexibility, durability under repeated stress, and scalability to industrial manufacturing without further development. No performance benchmarks, load-bearing data, or comparative testing against existing rigid-to-flexible mechanisms were reported in the available summary. The logical next step is durability and load testing across the proposed application domains, particularly medical and robotics contexts where mechanical reliability under repeated cycling is a hard requirement.