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David S Lawson
 
Posts: n/a
Default segments, how to figure?

In message
(Bob Pritchard) wrote:

Hi George, With all due respect using Pi in segmenting introduces error. The
reason is as you know Pi is a measure of the circumference of a circle.When we
build a segmented ring we are stepping around with straight lines. The segments
have to be slightly longer to acomplish the same diameter. While a ring with a
lot of segments won't have a substantial error a ring with fewer segments will
have more of an error.
Draw a ring with a smaller amount of segments then do the math and you will
find the pi method results in a shorter segment length thus a smaller finished
diameter.
In some designs enough error to cause major problems.


Yes, that method will produce a 7 inch ring at the segment tips and not
at the centres which is what I assume is wanted.

To expand this thread a little, does anyone know of a computer software
program to make these calculations, to run on a Risc PC instead of
windows.
Dave Lawson
Redditch UK