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Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

2009

Geometry and Topology

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Full-Text Articles in Mathematics

Flattening A Cone, Sean A. Broughton Aug 2009

Flattening A Cone, Sean A. Broughton

Mathematical Sciences Technical Reports (MSTR)

We want to manufacture a cut-off slanted cone from a flat sheet of metal. If the cone were a normal right cone we know that we would simply cut out a sector of a circle and roll it up. However the cone is slanted. We want to know what the flattened shape looks like so that we can cut it out and roll it up to closely approximate correct final shape. We also want to minimize the amount of wasted metal after the shape is cut out.

The problem, and it generalizations may be solved analytically but the analytical solution …