Attacked from behind by the 20th Century

Well it had to happen sooner or later didn’t it?

Someone has complained about my publishing Golden-Mean Calliper designs that were too close his… and fair enough, they are hell of a close even though there are numerous examples of prior-art all over the web… he seemed like a reasonable bloke, so why argue?

So. Although his original request was that I err… censor? my site to sustain the 20th century notion of intellectual property (denying information to the The Universal Mind), what I will do instead is repeat the de rigueur 21st century response, which is to produce a better design, and open-source it.

The original design had a couple of flaws – the tips of the callipers don’t meet in the middle, and the bits where the rivets/bolts go are hell of a flimsy.

So… I’ve put together a swoopier design with reinforced connector points, allowing for a more standard-gauge rivet/bolt, and designed so the points do in fact touch. I haven’t Ponokoed this yet – so don’t go mass producing this thinking that it’ll work straight off the bat – it will need a bit of tweaking I suspect.

This design is released under Creative Commons Share-Alike license… and is free to all, including the original complainant.

and looks a bit like this:

The .svg is available from Ponoko here