Winston wrote:
....

1) It did occur to me that the line between the center of your
hinge and the gap between the clamping leaf and bending leaf
appears off - center a bit, which would cause the workpiece
to be lifted unnecessarily.

Good catch. I went to great effort to make the hinge axis on the bend
line, but didn't get it quite right.

Nevertheless, the clamp resists lifting well enough and fails when the
bending force starts pushing horizontally more (after 45 degrees).

See how Dave used a *piano* hinge? Kewl!
http://www.ch601.org/tools/bendbrake/brakeplans.pdf

That is a nice solution for his problem, but not very extensible.
First, a piano hinge is WAY too weak for any non-trivial bending. Also,
it puts the hinge axis below the bend line, which might not be too bad -
I'll have to think about it. That would leave the ends open, like the
MagnaBend does.

2) Can you use a permanent magnet to be sure your MOTEs are
indeed out-of phase magnetically? (With your head *out*
of the path of the magnet, preferably!)

Yep, but I want them to be in-phase, to avoid the magnetic shorting that
later posts point out.

3) As practice for the next design, would you consider removing
both of your windings, welding both your cores together and
providing a rectangular winding that encloses both center
legs?

Well then I'd have to wind a coil. I'd really rather avoid that.

Thanks,
Bob