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Re: Toroid made easy
Original poster: Vardan <vardan01@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Yeah!!!
Pressurized molten steel does not sound safe ;-D
But a photo essay of the process would be cool!!!
Cheers,
Terry
At 07:07 PM 2/2/2006, you wrote:
A very clever idea Gary.
Can you provide some photos to Terry so he can post them in the archives?
Dr. Resonance
I cut 2 pieces of .040" flat steel into a donut shape. Donut is
20" outside diameter with a 6" diameter hole. Metal plates are
welded together along the outside and inside edge only. A very
small pipe fitting is welded to the surface of 1 sheet of metal
near the center. A 5 lb. bag of charcoal is ignited and given
enough time to turn the 2 metal plates red hot. Air is slowly
blown into the fitting and the red hot metal is blown up like a
balloon. The flat metal will blow up into a toroid shape it is
sorta like blowing up a car tire innertube. Let it cool. Grind
the welds smooth and reweld if needed to make it smooth. You can
also do the same thing to make a sphere. I did the same thing
with two 20" circles no donut shape this time it made a very nice
sphere. It only takes a few minutes for the metal to turn red hot
so the charcoal is basically wasted. It would be good to make
about a dozen toroid and sphere parts get them all welded together
and heat them red hot one by one it would not be so wasteful on
charcoal. I have not tried any really large ones yet but I see no
reason someone couldn't cut out some 48" donuts shapes to make a
large toroid. When the metal blows up like a balloon the outside
diameter gets smaller. You can get a 98% accurate idea of the
actual size by bending a sheet of paper into a radius to see how
large your finished balloon shape toroid will be.
Gary Weaver