CLaNZeR Playing with magnets

Well this guy has been milling around for a few years now and most sites that played with his ideas have not been updated since 1999.
For the full low down on David Hamel and pictures of him with the Hamel Spinner check out http://www.world-famous.com/DavidHamel.html

To save me waffling on about who, what and where. Please check the links below that are all related to the Hamel Spinner:

http://www.usajohnsons.com/cool_energy_stuff/experiments/thamel.htm

http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/hamspin.htm

http://www.keelynet.com/gravity/hamag.htm

http://mysite.verizon.net/tomhunter/experime/spinner.htm

http://theverylastpageoftheinternet.com/magneticDev/trovato/ortemus007.htm

http://www.icehouse.net/john1/hamel.html

There are many more web pages and doing a search on www.google.com for hamel spinner should help wet your appetite.

First Tests with Hamel Spinner.

Well first thing is, ignore all the web pages saying that magnets should be this type, this size etc etc. Ignore the part of leaving one magnet out and drilling a hole in the plastic rim.
As far as I can see it does not matter and I think the reason people cannot get it going is because they are glueing their magnets into place. I have found by just letting the magnets settle at their own place, the correct magnetic flux gets created. They do not have to be Ceramic Ferrite and I actually used NdFeB magnets. Of course doing it this way means alot of fiddling around as you will find out!.

Be aware that it is a bitch trying to get a number of magnets around a hoop with all their North sides facing in, but it can be done.

In the picture below I used a 100mm flu vent that is used for the 4 inch toilet fans found in the UK.
At first I lined the perimeter of the flu with magnets just using a cable tie, but as soon as I got to the last magnet it was obvious that the force of the NdFeB magnets was too great and they kept popping out and dragging the rest of the loop away with themselves. In the end I used a piece of wood cut out to 103mm around the flue and lined it with the magnets, then I placed the cable tie around them. This seemed to keep the magnets in place as I turned all the North poles inwards.
I used 15 in number of 3/4" * 3/4" * 1/8 NdFeB Magnets Grade N38.

As you can see by letting the magnets push away from each other instead of glueing they form a even spacing.

Next I got a steel ball used in a 1 1/16" PinBall machine and attached it to a OD50 x ID20 x 10mm NdFeB magnet. The force of the magnet held the steel ball in place, so no need for Glue!

Next get a piece of PlexiGlass and lay the ball+magnet on it. Lower the 100mm ring slowly down towards it and yep indeed when the height is correct it starts to spin.

Excuse the bad picture but trying to hold the magnet and take a photo at the same time is diffiuclt!!
As you lower the ring more towards the ring magnet it speeds up, speeds up alot.

Test Rig.

I am lucky in that I have a CNC machine http://www.cncdudez.com and a mini lathe and the Jigs below along with the wheels took about 1 hour to produce.
I used 8mm PlexiGlass and cut out the wheels with my CNC Machine, the Aluminium pole was lathed down from 8mm to 5.8mm to fit a small bearing I had available and simply used a 4" vice to hold the pole vertical.
The Magnets are ferrite blocks that come with 2 holes drilled in them and measure 55mm * 25mm * 9mm

Okay so above we talked about the Hamel Spinner and yep it worked, but was it the hand movements that kept it going????, because the spinning ball and magnet does not hang around and you end up moving your magnetic ring around following it.

So next is to create a static model of the Hamel Spinner, where the middle does not move and see what happens.

Disk One

Find below Disk One where the Magnets are mounted on a wheel.

This has 8 magnets all evenly spaced around a 200MM wheel. All the North Poles point upwards.

Disk Two

Find below Disk two where the Magnets are mounted on a wheel.

This has 8 magnets spaced offset around a 200MM wheel. All the North Poles point upwards.
After magnet number 1 left of center top, each magnet after moves inwards 3mm.

Okay here we go
There has been some interesting results between the two Disks by suspending a ring magnet in the middle as shown below:

With Disk 1 it did not spin at all, with Disk 2 and the offset configuration, well that was a different story!!!
The picture below shows the magnet mounted to a bearing to keep it central, I have reversed it to show it in place. To make it spin you place the South side facing down and have to use your hand to keep an even gap.
This proves that it spins without the left/right movement of the hand, the next tests will be to fix the depth via a grub screw.

I will post more details as I now start to play with different configurations to indeed see if we can get the Hamel Spinning disk into a working format,

PLEASE NOTE.

Sorry I am not posting the results of my experiments as this would take too much time.
But when I have something I can shout about and that works 100%, then be assured I will post an update.
For now this is just a Blog as such of what I am working on.

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