Welcome to my M3CD builders notes:

When I started out to build an M3CD, like most of you, I found the information on the internet and said " this is great, I can build one of these, nothin' to it ". Yea, right, nothin' to it... SURE. There's an awful lot that I didn't understand, and for a while the more I learned, the more I realized that I didn't know!

The first prototype, although strange effects were noted, didn't work at all. Same with the 2nd, 3rd etc. until I finally started to realize some of the principles involved. Whenever one chooses to build prototype devices, the first rule is FAILURE. The second rule is EDUCATION. Whenever education fails, the first rule takes over! Whenever the first rule takes over, the second rule is the answer! Sometimes education can only be obtained by failure, trial and error, and perseverance. This can be extremely frustrating but is an absolute necessity for ultimate success. Ultimate success is still just beyond my complete grasp, but I'll try to help out any experimenters traveling down this difficult path.

The M3CD, Mini 3 Cone Device, is a miniature energy collection and focusing device based on the work of David Pierre Hamel, I take no credit whatsoever for it's original design. As their are web pages available describing David' s life work, I'll not go into this here.

Now, let's get down to the nitty-gritty of building!

Let's start with the cones.

The cones in my M3CD are made from .010" aluminum flashing, 4" tall by 4" wide at the top. The seam is soldered with aluminum solder, and the inner cone is fashioned the same way. Conventionally, the inner cone is 1/2 the height of the outer cone which would make it 4" wide by 2" tall, I decided that after looking at the MPM ( Master Pyramid Matrix) perhaps exactly 1/2 height wasn't quite where I'd like to see the pivot point for the next cone to sit, so using phi I made my inner cones slightly shorter putting the pivot point higher. The motion obtained when the stack of cones were assembled looked much nicer, and more uniform, than when the pivots were on center. The inner cone is glued into place, in EXACT center of the outer 4X4" cone. A 3/4" doughnut magnet is glued to the tip of each inner cone, and hanging slightly below the tip for centering, to help align energy flow through the center of the cone stack. Each of these magnets is oriented north toward the top of the device, south downward.

(There has been a lot of discussion regarding the magnets attached to the cones. Much of this discussion is regarding the exact placement of those magnets on the cone itself, this is the way I've built mine, but the next version may differ slightly.)

Then the " rim " magnets were fastened to the sides of the cones around the rim with glue. A larger device would require better fastening techniques than glue, but this was cheaper and faster for this prototype. Placement of these magnets is critical to the overall balance of the cone! The magnets should not extend up over the edge at the top of the cone, but should be level with the top edge. The first cones I made weren't balanced correctly, but they had the magnets fastened to a steel band, which was fastened to the cone. As I was building better balanced cones I decided to try fastening the magnets directly to the side of the cone. Nowhere could I find any information stating whether or not this would be a good idea, so I figured " what the heck ". It's very important that these magnets are placed correctly in relationship to the center and the point of the cone, I used a machinist square to verify that every magnet was placed exactly the same distance from the tip, this worked out very well.

The top cone has an aluminum cover across the top of it for placement of the rejection magnet, discussed below and also has a pivot cone to hold the center magnet in the same position as the other two cones.

Now we'd better discuss the magnets used on the rims of the cones, and the suspension rings.

I used grade #5 round ceramic disk magnets, 3/4"X 3/16" from magnetsource.com because they were available locally, as well as directly from the manufacturer. Plus there not too expensive! I didn't know a whole lot about magnets, or their properties, when I started this project, otherwise my selections may have differed.

I didn't build my cones around the magnets, therefore when I got down to the last magnet, often it wasn't the right size to fit the gap. A bench grinder and a pair of safety glasses took care of this problem by grinding the magnets to fit.

The suspension rings.

The outer rings of magnets, called suspension rings, are fashioned from approximately 16 gauge sheet steel cut into strips 3/4" wide to accommodate the width of the magnets and bent to a 6" diameter loop. I spot-welded the ring together but a single pop-rivet works just as well. I fastened the magnets to the ring with electrical tape, then wound #26 enamel coated magnet wire on the rings. 2 wraps around at the joint between each magnet. This wire is installed to help " align and synchronize " the rings to each other. Wrapping was done up and over toward the right for the top and bottom ring, but, up and over toward the left for the center ring. The difference between wrapping directions is because I've used north poles in rejection for the top and bottom cones / rings, while the center is a south-south configuration. Electrically, each ring measures 1 1/2 ohm, but when the cones are in place a ohm reading can't be taken. The measurement works out for all three rings until the third cone is put in place, then electrical flow starts across this wire and can be measured with a volt meter. The top end of this wire is attached to the shell, the bottom end is allowed to hang loose just slightly within the gap of the oscillator base.

The oscillator base.

The bottom cone tip needs a place to pivot, same as the other two cones. This pivot point also needs to be a dynamic unit working in conjunction with the cone assembly, thus the oscillator base. This is basically 2 pieces of plywood cut out to the same diameter as the cones, eg. 4". For larger cone devices I don't believe they need to be as large as the cones, as long as they fit the MPM. The top piece has an extra center / pivot cone attached at dead center for the pivot. The bottom piece has 3 cut-out ping-pong balls for marbles to set into while still allowing the marbles to move with some freedom. I think that the curve of the ping-pong ball is actually a little to small for the 3/4" stone marbles that I used, so I ended up only using these for cups on the bottom piece, and used a very smooth piece of aluminum to cover the bottom of the top half of the oscillator base. The idea of using cups with a ball shaped curve for the stone marbles ( pinion balls ) is that not only will the oscillator move from side to side but also have a truly dynamic motion with a slight up and down action.

The to halves of the oscillator are gently held on center with 2 magnets in attraction. The magnet fastened to the top / moveable half is oriented north upward, the same as the center magnets in the cones. The bottom magnet is the only magnet in the entire assembly with south facing upward.

The frame.

For the framework, I used wood. The first frame I built was steel, maybe it would have worked out better had the cones been balanced better, but it proved out not to be workable at that time. The upright pieces are the most critical parts of the frame, and should be very thin, allowing the shell to be as close to the suspension rings as possible. I used corner molding pieces from the local building supply store, and carved the curvature to fit tightly with a home-made fixture on my table saw until I had 1/4" between the rings and the shell. For a device this size, I'd like to have seen this gap be even smaller. It has been discussed that attaching the suspension rings directly to the shell, without a framework would possibly be a better design, but for a device this small I found this to be somewhat impractical. Designing is easy on paper, but some designs aren't put into practice very easily.

The shell.

For the shell I used 8" steel stove pipe cut down to 6 1/2" diameter to fit the frame. I made this in two pieces which fit tightly together so that I could leave the top 2" off while placing the cones into the frame / shell assembly. I welded a piece of sheet steel to the bottom of the shell, with a 2" hole in the center for air flow. I drilled 1/8" holes in the side of the shell spaced 1" apart located at the suspension ring areas for air flow also.

The lid is made of the same sheet metal as the bottom piece, I cut mine into two pieces so that I could get an exact placement. The lid has a rejection magnet ( north up ) attached to it to put a magnetic pressure against the top cone.

Rejection magnets.

I initially used 1 3/4" doughnut magnets for rejection, but found them to be too strong for my device. I ended up using a 3/8" button magnet from Radio Shack on the lid and a 3/4" disk on the top cone. This configuration has been one of the more difficult to get a handle on, and has been figured out by trial and error on my part.

Setup is a topic to be discussed in its own right! No matter what I tell anyone, there setup techniques will not always be the same as mine. There are many areas of this device which should have been built differently, and would have been, had I known about them. This M3CD project has basically come to a finish, and my M3CD is now a working prototype which I made to prove only to myself that this technology is workable! This M3CD is now going to be my test unit, which will probably undergo some further changes only to prove theories and ideas on my behalf, before trying them on a larger and more expensive unit. I hope that this information will be of help to someone other than myself in gaining the understanding necessary to build larger, more efficient devices along the way.

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