Living Hinge Generator

A living hinge, also called a lattice hinge or kerf bend, is a field of small staggered cuts that lets a rigid flat sheet like plywood or acrylic bend into a curve. The cuts run along the bend axis and the uncut bridges between them flex, so a single flat piece can wrap into a cylinder, a rounded box corner, or a curved lid without any separate hinge hardware.

Three things control flex. Closer cut spacing bends tighter. A longer cut length bends tighter. A smaller link gap (the uncut bridge between cuts) bends tighter but makes the hinge weaker and easier to snap. The Flexible, Balanced and Strong presets give you a starting point, and you can fine-tune from there. Always test on a scrap of your real material first.

The link gaps are the only material holding the piece together while it bends, so they are both the hinge and the weak point. Smaller gaps flex more easily and reach a tighter radius, but they fatigue and crack faster, especially in plywood. Bigger gaps are stronger and more durable but stiffer. It is a direct trade-off, which is why testing on your exact material and thickness matters.

Thin plywood (3mm is the classic), MDF, and acrylic all work, but each has a different minimum bend radius before it snaps. Plywood is forgiving and the most common. Acrylic can bend but cracks more readily and likes a gentler radius. Thicker stock needs longer cuts and bigger gaps. There is no universal setting, so cut a small test strip before committing to the full part.

Yes. The SVG is written with real width and height in millimetres and a matching viewBox, so it imports at the exact size you set in LightBurn, the Glowforge app, or xTool. Cut every line on a cut layer. If you keep the outline, cut that too to release the piece.

It is completely free with no login. The pattern is generated in your browser with JavaScript and nothing is uploaded to any server. Download the SVG and load it straight into your laser software.