A question about higher order polyhedra.

[KitemanSA]

I apologize to tombo for not paying close attention (went to bottom of postings and scrolled up to see image, and then neglected to notice it was a quoted reply).

To err is human, to forgive is tombo! I think his graphics are divine.

The merged-coil image is "off" in a few ways from my mental image, which is OK since that image preceded my posting by who-know-how-long.

Understood, which is why I noted things like "like DrB wanted" in describing the squred main coils).

First, I haven't been pushing for deliberately distorted coils (triangular and square); I was just expecting some distortion would be necessary to do what I was imagining.

Thats ok, I am.

Second, there should be exactly 14 holes; that image has the 6 main torus hole, 8 corner torus holes, plus a lot of extra holes because the torus merging isn't as complete as I was imagining.

If you don't have a hole where the toruses meet, then you have metal at a funny cusp with its atendant energy losses. There WILL be cusps there, either funny or line-like, so there will have to be a hole.

Third, the places where the coils are merged aren't fat enough. They need to accommodate the fact that if each torus is full of wire, then the merge locations need to have at least 1.414... times the diameter of the regular minor-diameter of each torus (some places may need to be even thicker).

The assumption in the graphic that tombo made was that the arcs from straight side to straight side were half empty cases. The straights defined the size for the combined number of wires, and half of the wires went each way around the loops.

[tombo]

Apology accepted. No problem. I get in a hurry sometimes too.

Much of the cross section is required for cooling and insulating and mechanical structure.
So doubling the number of wires does not anywhere near double the cross section of the Magrid's can. Let alone the diameter.

That drawing was not intended to account for internal structure.
It was just to get a good visualization of Kiteman's description of a coil configuration.

[KitemanSA]

That drawing was not intended to account for internal structure.
It was just to get a good visualization of Kiteman's description of a coil configuration.

And not even my favorite one which is this one, the bowed varient of the theme. The perfect bowed cuboctahedron.



Vernon, if you want to see a good related discussion, check out the topic titled "Is There an Optimal Size for Magrid Casings?" in the Design Forum.

[tombo]

Also check out an older thread titled "Magrid Brainstorming"