Homemade magnetic indicator base

Make a "shower cap" for your base by slipping a plastic sandwich bag over it. When you take off the base, just pull off the plastic, inverting it over the chips, then empty out the chips in the trash and put the plastic back over the base. If "shower cap" isn't macho enough, call it a "condom" .. :-)

GWE

You beat me to it. Also, your air blowgun will knock chips off a magnet quite well. Just be careful where you send them.

Grant, Rex, thanks for the suggestions! I will go out to the shop and put a wrap of polyethylene over the magnet.

I'll also try the blowgun, though these rare-earth magnets are pretty strong. A colleague bought some to play with. He held two of 'em a couple of inches apart and let 'em go. Slammed together so hard that he had magnet chunks.....

Best -- Terry

Yeah, those things are amazing strong. I keep a couple of dime-sized ones on the gear cover of my 9" Logan to hold the chuck keys. Air will blow the chips off them, no problem. You just have to watch you don't blow the magnet out the door into the dirt ;) I also use them to hold things like the inlet vent registers on my fireplace heatilator. After years of trying to use screws into the brick and mortar, I stuck a couple of rare-earth magnets on the corners, and pop them in place. Works great. I have some more, including some pea-sized ones. Anybody else got an innovative use for them?

I have a bunch of the 1/4 inch ones on order. Three epoxied to thr back of a indicator = magback that will hold on almost any shaped surface. Latches for boxes and cabinets. Holding panels in place. Eddy current clutch? Magnetic chuck. 'Sticky notes'.

Ken.

Housecleaner came and found 2 pairs of 1"x1"x2" N40 magnets and decided to put them in the same container. One mess being better than two. No fingers or eyes lost but about a 1000 lb collision with sparks and 2 shattered blocks.

Earlier this year I used one of those Lee Valley magnets with its matching mounting cup to make a "strong" magnetic catch at the top center our home's front hall closet's bifold door. I finally got PO'd after twenty years of having bulky winter clothing hung inside that closet pushing the center of the door back open, and did something about it. The compression spring gadget at the end of the track (Which works on the principle of applying force offset from the center hinge pivots to keep the door closed.) just wasn't strong enough to do the job everytime.

I screwed a piece of 16 gage steel to the back of the top of the door adjacent to where it folded and fastened the magnet to an aluminum bracket located in the right place.

Hardly rocket science, but it grabbed the door so well I had to put a couple of layers of masking tape on the steel piece to make it easier to open. I gotta admit, I do get a satisfied feeling when I come home, hang up my jacket and feel that magnet suck the door in with a "click" when it gets about a half an inch from being closed.

As far as "other uses" go, making a diamagnetic levitation demo can be fun, and it can be a cute science toy "curiousity piece" on your desk, sort of like a "hand boiler" or a "drinking bird" or even one of those Crookes radiometers which was driving me nuts a couple of weeks ago.

I made a diamagnetic levitator demo a couple of years ago. Excuse me if I've posted this link before:

Jeff

Another cool trick with little round rare earth magnets is to put about 3 of the

1/2" ones together forming a pellet, cut a piece of 1/2" hard copper pipe about 10" long, suspend the pipe vertically and drop the magnetic pellet into the pipe. You would expect it to fall right through but it does not! It floats down slowly because of the induced eddy currents in the copper. Really good science show'n'tell ..

A really good place to buy these little magnets is:

GWE

Over several years, the ones I have been using in a similar application have deteriorated somewhat, causing the surface layer to peel away. Gerry :-)} London, Canada