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Re: Toroid made easy



Original poster: "Scott Hanson" <huil888@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

Gary -
Is this a proposal for a conceptual process to construct a toroid, or is this a description of a process that you have actually used to construct a toroid?

If you have actually used this process to construct an "inflated" steel toroid, would it be possible to post photos of the toroid as it undergoes the various fabrication steps, or at least of the finished item?

I'm just having a hard time visualizing the "pancake" of .040" thick steel disks being "blown up like a balloon" and yielding a near-toroidal shape, regardless of how hot the material is.

Regards,
Scott Hanson
----- Original Message ----- From: "Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 5:38 PM
Subject: Toroid made easy


Original poster: gary350@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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