In article ,
Bob Engelhardt wrote:

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

... The fancy hinges are another matter.

In the US, I didn't find any patents assigned to Magnabend, but I bet
there are patents somewhere, starting with Australia. ...

The thread on the Practical Machinist forum about MagnaBends had a reply
from an Australian who had worked with the inventors of the brake and
hinges. He posted this link to the patent:
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=n3A2AAAAEBAJ

Wonderful. I knew there had to be a patent.

Using information from the patent, I've also found some relevant
information in Alan Stuart Bottomley's resume:

http://aaybee.com.au/Resume%20Dec%202010.mht.htm


I still don't understand them.

The patent isn't awfully clear. But the idea cannot be all that
complex. It's probably a beefy variation on the invisible hinges used
on kitchen cabinets.


Building them would be totally out the question for me.

That isn't at all obvious just yet. Some of the later hinge designs look
perfectly practical for a HSM, being two or three orthogonal
pin-in-sleeve hinge joints in mechanical series.


But, I've been thinking about it. The hinge does offer the unique
ability to bend at the end of the brake. But the need to make such
bends is pretty limited, for me anyhow. Even the MagnaBend video only
shows one sequence of bends at the end, and many more along the clamp bar.

So, for me, the biggest advantage is the magnetic clamp, which could be
homemade fairly easily. And use traditional pin hinges at the ends.
The bending bar would have to be stiffer without the hinges in the
middle, but that's easy enough.

Although there has been a thread on using discarded microwave oven power
transformers as the magnet, it isn't obvious that this is necessary.
Given that the excitation current will be DC, laminated steel is not
needed, so one could cobble a magnetic circuit from ordinary mild steel.

Joe Gwinn