Dar S.
sheltech@webtv.net

>you will be delighted to learn that blanking dies make fantastic tesselations. [n.b. a tesselation is a mathematical form that interlocks with itself to create a repeating pattern; think of the M.C. Escher lithographs of birds, fish, lizards, knights on horseback, and so forth. There are a couple of really good books about creating tesselated designs based on the work of Escher. There are also web sites done by math teachers that explain the process very well. Do a search on the term and you'll find delicious things.

>Also, now that we have all this lovely graphics software, it's a whole lot easier to "test" how well a shape will work in a pattern. You can do wonderful marriage of metal things with this. I have not had time to pursue anything beyond my initial experiments, so I am delighted to see that someone else is going to. Rest assured that Dar can cut that die exactly, and he also knows this guy with an EDM machine that can take a CAD file - or so Lee tells me. :-)

>Please keep us posted as this project develops, I'd love to see what you do with it!

>Anne

Um, yes, I can have the edm guy cut the die. I'm not particularly interested in sawing that big piece of 3/16 "
steel, plus you'd get the accuracy required.
DS