Steorn Low Energy Actuator

[MrMag]

Craigy,

Nice videos. Are you going to go any further on this? I would think that this could be setup with maybe four of the shields and use ramps to move the shields. Sort of torbay style.
Also, the video shows that your magnets are sticking to the stainless. Magnets do not stick to stainless steel. Maybe that's why you got it so cheap 

[Craigy]

There are different grades i assume, i know my stainless steel nuts and bolts don't attract whilst the spoon , the sink and the pressure cooker do to varing degrees some more than others and they all perport to be stainless. But in the shield that is not so much of a problem as the forces are equaled out so that the magnets of shield can move freely. In fact it is more the magnetic permiability properties we are after, ie, that the shield does not get magnetised overnight that is most important..

i have lots of projects half built at the mo.. so not sure when i will return to the shield, i built another using 3 x 15mm round magnets, now they are strong, and the shield or magnets can fall down under their own weight.  So it works, you saw how attractive the errm, stainless i was working with is. lol..

i was thinking of building a revised torbay, with just 3 stators or lemas, to see if that would work.

still so many things happening , what with steorn and others, not sure what project to finish next..

Craig

[iadcw]

I think the actuator is older steorn technology - if a year or so can be considered old. I listened to an interview with the Steorn CEO and he said he had a self running machine and it worked with magnets pulling on ferrous metal. This interview was found on the Steorn website.

[rrintoul]

Craigy, like iadcw I noticed Steorn said they had pmagents working on ferrous metal.  That's the approach I tried, because I didn't want the shield to interact with magnets on both sides.  If you use a shield that strongly interacts with the magnet and put it as close as possible without touching (like in the LEMA patent) then you can turn off the magnet and expose it's full potential when you turn it on (because the magnetic field decreases so quickly with distance).  Then of course the problem is moving the shield because it wants to stay right on top of the magnet.  I hooked up a crude mechanism that used an elastic band to balance the shield's desire to be over the magnet.  I got very close to equilibrium where it took very low energy to move the shield.  Since the shield was reactive with the PM it meant you could basically touch the ferrous metal to the outside of the shield and there was very little attraction (almost perfectly turned off).

A picture of my mechanism:

Reade

[Craigy]

Yes i see, you are countering the attraction force with a spring force, but that is not a low energy actuator in the true sense of the expression. In your diagram if you add another 2 neos either side of the one there at the moment you will find that the shield will not be attracted to just one of the neos, it will move freely over and between them, until the shield gets to the extreme end of one side or the other.

The neos should be placed on a metal plate with all of the same poles facing upward, the shield will require little or no force to move from end to end

Craig