MagLev C

[Phys1cs]

Depends. an easy thing to do is take some wire mesh and just make a box around your propellor. Or if you're making a car, you can make a kind of duct around the propellor (truncated cone) to direct air flow, and then put mesh on the front and back.

[iwonder]

The ducted design like Phys1cs mentioned might actually work better, but if you just want a simple design there's one in the image gallery just look under maglev! (shameless advertisement, I know)

[mitchwerntz]

What magnetic strips are suggested for the Maglev car and track? My group and I are having a little trouble keeping our car off the ground

[iwonder]

How heavy is your car? and the strips from Pitsco or Kelvin are good to use, ones from like walmart are halbach arrays which wont work for maglev.

[Master_Sneeze]

How heavy is your car? and the strips from Pitsco or Kelvin are good to use, ones from like walmart are halbach arrays which wont work for maglev.

Our car is about 1 kg, we are using the standards pitsco track, with a few ceramic bar magnets. So far we haven't seen a team come close to our car's size. We have been able to get travel the entire 95 cm in as little as 3 seconds and as much as 15 seconds. We were altering the time by adding mass, and disconnecting one of the two 9 volt batteries.

[Phys1cs]

Is anyone using a propeller cap similar to this one? (the silver part)

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q ... 4049338101

right now ours is stuck closed and we can no longer get the motor shaft onto the cap...

Please help!!!

[TheGatesofLogic]

How exactly does one build a track out of ceramic magnets? The strip tracks are rather intuitive, but it seems to me that the only way to build a track out of individual ceramic magnets would be to anti-align every single magnet on each side to force a singular direction for the poles, if this is so then doesn't the track demagnetize very quickly? any explanation would be very nice

[Master_Sneeze]

How exactly does one build a track out of ceramic magnets?

Sorry, I didn't exactly clarify that, we are using the pitsco tracks with the standard magnetic strips. On the bottom of our vehicle is where we put ceramic magnets, they are about 5cm x 2.5cm and we have 4 on each side.

[TheGatesofLogic]

nah, i was not referring to you actually, was more of a general question, i have a surplus of over 200 1-7/8 inch by 7/8 inch by 1/2 inch ceramic magnets each with a 3 pound lift force and i thought i might be able to make a track for my schools other team and i am absolutely stumped as to how i do this. the only way that makes any sense is to anti-align them and as far as i know that would demagnetize them very quickly. i've seen other teams use ceramic magnets so i was wondering how people do it. Do people really anti-align them like that and does the demagnetization actually happen or is it not noticeable?

[JTMess]

nah, i was not referring to you actually, was more of a general question, i have a surplus of over 200 1-7/8 inch by 7/8 inch by 1/2 inch ceramic magnets each with a 3 pound lift force and i thought i might be able to make a track for my schools other team and i am absolutely stumped as to how i do this. the only way that makes any sense is to anti-align them and as far as i know that would demagnetize them very quickly. i've seen other teams use ceramic magnets so i was wondering how people do it. Do people really anti-align them like that and does the demagnetization actually happen or is it not noticeable?

My teammate and I have build two tracks out of ceramic magnets in the last year. The demagnetization was definitely noticeable over time - when we build the first track about 13 months ago, it comfortably levitated 2000g, and it now only supports about 1200g. We're planning to build a third track next month using stronger ceramic magnets such that we won't have any significant demagnetization problems before states.