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Just "smoke & mirrors" Vermin. Very poor service! Maybe your mirror cell will be allright for the job, but you wouldn't be happy if a few wheelnuts were missing on a new car, even if all the engineers in the world agreed that three per wheel are more than enough. And what about the resale value! How are you gonna explain to a prospective buyer that it just looks bad but it works just fine! Give them hell Vermin! Don't let them get off so easy.
I have online access to back issues of S&T through uni, and there is no article in the Nov 1994 issue by some "Japanese engineer" about mirror cells. They must mean this one about finite element modelling of mirror plate deformation:
Toshimi Taki, "Mirror support: 3 or 9 points?", Sky and Telescope. Cambridge: Sep 1994. Vol. 88, Iss. 3; p. 84 (4 pages).
There is one real problem with the study. It assumes that the mirror lays flat and the weight of the mirror is spread uniformly across its surface area. So the results can only apply when you're looking at the zenith. There's a followup article with more data tabulated here:
Toshimi Taki, "More thoughts on mirror-cell design", Sky and Telescope. Cambridge: Apr 1996. Vol. 91, Iss. 4; p. 75 (3 pages)
PM me if you want copies of the articles.
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