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Computers and magnets?

T

Tiny

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 31, 2003
Messages
6,346
Computers and Magnets, can they get along?

I was over at a friend's of a friend pary and noticed her LP player. It was suspended in air over a base by magnets. I thought it was neat and wondered if it was possible to do this with each part of the computer.

What I was thinking was having a base and a alluminum (or stainless steel since you can't magatize that right?) plate for each part. One for the harddrive, the PSU, the mobo, each optical drive...etc. And have each plate be hovering in mid air over a base. Can you do that? Do magnets hurt any computer stuff?
 
i get the feeling when your using eletrically sensitive components and magentic storage like a hard drive, it may cause an issue or two.
 
but I was thinking that since the magnets would be in the corners of the plates and the plates themselves would not be magnatized then it should be ok right?

Besides, HDs have magnets in them already. I broke a dead one apart and cut the magnet up and use it as my fridge magnets, pretty powerful little things.
 
Yes, because it's magnetic data storage, thus they need something with a strong magnetic field...but if you subject them to a significant external magnetic field your data is going bye-bye.
 
The magnets you would need to mess up a computer hard drive would be waaaay beyond the power of a kitchen magnet. Shouldn't hurt anything really. It's just not good to risk it. In fact, the magnets in the hard drives can be taken out and played with. They are really really powerful and I've seen someone lift a computer tower with them.
 
Personally I can't see it causing a problem if they were regular old fridge magnets but the kind that u would need to hold up a hard drive, even with an aluminum plate on the bottom the tiny magnetic field might cause a problem but then yeah hard drives do have pretty powerful ones in them so who know it might be alright. Try it on a old comp and see.
 
Why not just use air cushions if you want a floating computer? Take apart an air hockey table or something like that.
 
Magnetism aside, the whole "floating computer" concept kinda strikes me as a bad idea. It'd look amusing, but one good tap and whooo! brace for impact! :eek:
 
I have an old slot 1 mobo and junk I can try it out on.

Wish me luck.
 
just dont to it to the HDD, floppy, tape drive ect

but doing it to the mobo and CD-roms ect will be fine. also if you want to do it to the HDD try it wil a lead base. that should work,, but do it with come old crap first
 
Wouldn't a lead base make it so much heavier that he'd have to at least double the power of the magnets he used? That might ruin the benefit any added shielding the lead provides.
 
You shouldnt have to worry about kitchen magnets. Besides the fans in your computer are magnetically driven ;)
 
however most kitchen magnets won't be strong enough to lift it. I don't think its a good idea, it would be a pain in the butt and not worth the expense.
 
peepingdan said:
The magnets you would need to mess up a computer hard drive would be waaaay beyond the power of a kitchen magnet. Shouldn't hurt anything really. It's just not good to risk it. In fact, the magnets in the hard drives can be taken out and played with. They are really really powerful and I've seen someone lift a computer tower with them.
Click to expand...
Not even the most powerful rare earth magnets are strong enough to affect the data stored on a HDD's platters. The devices used to wipe HDDs use extremely strong electromagnets.

There actually was an episode of MythBusters were they tried to erase the magnetic strip on those cheap cards used by parking lots, etc. It took a magnetic field of many Tesla to do anything to the data stored on those cards.

As long as you don't have an oscillating magnetic field there should be no problems.
 
Be careful, too, with what stainless steel grade you use. If I remember correctly, 400 series SS is non-magnetic, but 300 series can be slightly magnetic, due to the higher iron (and lower nickel) content. Also the reason why 400 series is more anti-corrosive than 300.

Do yourself a favor, and double check my memory with a google search, tho. 42 year old neurons don't fire nearly as well as they used to!! :eek: :rolleyes:
 
Othersider said:
Why not just use air cushions if you want a floating computer? Take apart an air hockey table or something like that.
Click to expand...
I'd love to pay that power bill....running the air compressors to "float"a computer.....one of my machines at work has an air float table....only lift's a couple of thousandths. Probably not practical.
 
I have access to all the super strong magnets that I want and all the different kinds of metal that I want (well, not ALL, but a lot of metal) through a place that I do some Accounting work for.

I will just have to try it out, let it run for 24/7 for a week and see what happens.
 
Tiny said:
Computers and Magnets, can they get along?

I was over at a friend's of a friend pary and noticed her LP player. It was suspended in air over a base by magnets. I thought it was neat and wondered if it was possible to do this with each part of the computer.

What I was thinking was having a base and a alluminum (or stainless steel since you can't magatize that right?) plate for each part. One for the harddrive, the PSU, the mobo, each optical drive...etc. And have each plate be hovering in mid air over a base. Can you do that? Do magnets hurt any computer stuff?
Click to expand...

I think you would run into problems with keeping things balanced, especially with all of the wires coming from the different computer parts. How in the world would something like this be practical?
 
I would lok at other alternative to making the components APPEAR to flat. Maybe some kind of support that projects out the back of the component into a clear sheet of acrylic? With all the wires there, most of the effect is lost anyways.
 
If you take the magnet you are planning on using and put it against the piece of aluminium or stainless on one side, and see if metal will stick on the other, you would know if there is enough to hurt anything.

If nothing will stick using really light stuff like pins, then there is not enough magnetizm to hurt anything.

 
I guess if you didnt want anything to flaot away in the event of bumpage, you could run thin wires up the corners of the floating metal plates to keep them in place. You should get some good "WTF?" moments with only a strting keeping everything suspened :D
 
I was planning on having the wires encased in sheathing, much like the stuff found in that Orac3 case (I think that is what the case was called). I was tinkering with the idea of having the mobo "exposed" (encased in a plexi box.) standing straight up in a full front position, and the PSU next to it but chromed. All the other parts, ie the HDs and opticals would appear to float in front of the mobo. The front ports and buttons would be on a single chromed plated near the bottom of the plexi mobo box.

Anyway, I was just wondering about the magnets. I have to plan this all out still. Just something that I was thinking at the party when I saw the LP. Don't get me wrong, the party was fun, I won a iRiver MP3 player, but when I saw the LP player, it caught my eye and my mind tends to wonder when I see things like that.
 
I think this would be practical for certain external devices such as external hard drives or such. It would look really nice if you had a nice, clean desk. and to keep it balanced all the time maybe try and build a plexiglass box around the device with so much airspace all around, like 2 inches or so, and then place your magnets in the corners of the cube. once you close up hte box it should suspend itself rather will inside the box and if you use strong enough magnets that are placed with good precision, it would take a pretty big jolt to knock it off blance.
 
It might be easier to use mirrors to create the illusion of suspended components, though.
 
This is the [H]forums....you are not supposed to do things the easy way.

:p ;)
 
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