Steorn : Is this how it works...

[colosimo]

PLease don't flame me. Newbie here!

From what I gather from the steorn videos on you tube, their web, and in the news their technology seems to be based upon permanent magnets (high strength probably)and the attraction between them. The use of shielding materials to bring about a "jump" from one magnet to another seems to be what their device does in the video. It clunks from step to step. Given also the hand gestures by the CEO as he is explaining (in a news interview) he seems to be interlocking his fingers as if suggesting interleaving of magnetic fields.

If this is how their technology works the thing is I had an idea similar to this almost a decade ago and discussed it on the web. I never got around to trying it out as the opinion was that the magnetic shield would react significantly with the magnets. The resulting forces would negate any benefit. I believe that this is probably still the case but please see the following files for the experimental setup (linear system) and a more practical system (rotary).

[gyulasun]

Hello Colosimo,

Thanks for the infos, your approach reminds me to a very similar setup (for the rotary case) discussed here by Igor (Wizkycho) in this Forum:

http://www.overunity.com/index.php/topic,316.msg13466.html#msg13466  In fact the whole topic started from here: http://www.overunity.com/index.php/topic,316.0.html but most of the links showing the initial drawings  do not exist any more. Nevertheless, it is worth reading if you think too.

Igor already bought a big sized ring magnet to test the idea, I wish I knew what results he already experienced.

Do you agree with using a ring magnet instead of several individual cylinder ones? Or the cyclically changing flux from the individual magnets is needed for the operation?

regards
Gyula

[colosimo]

thanks guys

I have the materials (well, almost -just waiting for shielding material). Will concoct something soon. I'll post the video on you tube - probably of it failing!

[MeggerMan]

Hi colosimo,
You can of course take the mu-metal shields out of an old hard disk drive. Its the greeny bronze coloured crescent moon shaped pieces that encapsulate the neo magnets for the voice coils.
The circular ring magnet sounds like a good idea but I am sure Steorn would have shown that as their example device, unless it was too obvious to duplicate just by seeing it.
Mu-metal is an excellent magnetic shield but it is heavily attracted to magnets.
I think the moving part needs to be ferrous but not a magnet.

ahh...I know, another piece of mu-metal.
What ever way you look at it the moving part is likely to alter the ring magnet field so that you need to do more work to move the shield.

Only experiments can show the truth though.

Regards
Rob

[Craigy]

I can't tell you much about the steorn stuff, but what i can say as it has been said many times elsewhere and by Sean at Steorn is that shields have nothing to do with the effect