magnetic levitating feet?????

[elcraigo]

Yea, and folks are mining these out of old drives to make home brew wind machines.
Do a search for "Wind Generator with Hard Drive Magnets"

[John Roman]

Cool stuff gentlemen,
I thought they might be from a hard drive. But these bad boys are way strong. Sure would put the "brakes" on. My technical experience with drives is minimal but what about the potential risk of data erasure or corruption upon exposure to a magnetic field? This must require a much greater field strength or perhaps a different type?
John

[elcraigo]

Good question about the magnetic field. I have a colleague at work that has one of these stuck to his metal wall at work. He did a lot of hard drive testing in a past job. I'll ask him tomorrow. The magnetic is very hard to pull off his wall.

[Paully]

Wouldn't it be really easy to make a set of those magnetic feet?  Two strong round magnets and an appropriately sized tube (plus a hacksaw to cut it to the proper length) and you are there.  Hmmm, how strong are the magnets at Home Depot?

[elcraigo]

In response to John's question about the 'corruption upon exposure to a magnetic field'
The drive head voice coil magnet assembly has two pairs of magnets and a bucking coil.
This similar to a shielded audio speaker that has a bucking magnet (a smaller magnet with the opposite polarity) glued on the main magnet. The magnetic field is canceled outside the drive head voice coil assembly.

[Grainger49]

Oooooo... I like bucking coils!  And, NO, that is not dirty!

Craig and I are from heavy industry.  Paul Joppa from Aero/Space industry.

[4krow]

Hell, lets just get it over with and use electromagnets with variable strength.

[Noskipallwd]

That's what I was thinking Greg. Actually I have thought alot about using maglev technology for a turntable main bearing. It would require some serious shielding to keep it from interfering with the signal.

Cheers,
Shawn