A conductive hinge is made of a superelastic shape memory alloy such as nitinol (NiTi) having a large elastic strain limit for enabling the hinge to bend to a small radius during stowage for flexible return to a trained rigid hinge position by training the shape memory alloy to assume a predetermined deployed configuration when released from a stowage configuration. The hinge is trained by forging at a temperature above a training temperature. The hinge is released to deploy solar cell panels as the hinges unfold to the forged trained deployed configuration.
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