Can Magnets Stop Vibrations? Magnetic Levitation Laser Table - Holograms 1

[@partlyblue]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the table does not sound very effective if the vibrations of people moving around the office aren't cancelled.

[@thethoughtemporium]

It's not an office. It's an 150 year old building made largely of wood and brick. The whole building feels like it's shaking when people walk around above you, and there's a carpentry shop on the other side of the wall running big machines and hitting things with hammers. Also a dozen people walking around in the lab itself or playing beat saber in the other room jumping around. So that'll give some perspective of how good these actually are. The fact that I could get a relatively consistent pattern minus a bit of shake with all that in the background is a testament to how well the feet work.

[@partlyblue]

@@thethoughtemporium Thank you, I figured there were some factors I was missing.

[@Vape_Master69]

wold have been cool to see the setup run on the ground, to see how much of a difference the table made.

[@0000Sierra117]

For comparison, I've worked on one of the big expensive tables when I was at University, and we could still see the vibrations from people walking in the room. It goes to show just how sensitive the optics are to changes in their alignment! Considering how much cheaper and easier to make this is, it did it's job alright. I love seeing other people's home labs and the innovation in making things work with what's on hand. With scientific equipment theres a sense of diminishing returns where you really have to pay out the nose for that last 10, 5 or 1 %. Of course, if that's your business, well, that's what you've got to pay.

[@anteconfig5391]

Heavy weights are harder to move. He didn't use a heavy table here, he just used acrylic. He said it was only temporary until he got something heavier. I think he mentioned using steel.

[@BazilRat]

I heard 'chocolate hologram' and a large, 5-year-old part of me screamed "I NEED THIS"

[@genijable]

I am now very interested in that and I am wondering if I could ask some favors in and use the lab at university to make such a mold.... We will see, but probably not.

[@BazilRat]

@@genijable Good luck!

[@versag3776]

Yeah

[@Schmogel92]

You really need to check out the channel, tech ingredients

[@Aaron-zu3xn]

i make edibles with weed leaf holograms on them,mushrooms too

[@samueltukua3061]

We have an indpendent biotechnology research class at our school and despite also having countless AP courses at our school, it is described as one of the hardest courses offered. Thank you for making me feel validated by the fact that we are not the only ones.

[@isettech]

The traditional alternate table is a slab of steel. Very heavy supported on 4 inner tubes such as from ATV wheels. The mass prevents movement from acoustic noise, and tires prevent vibration from the floor, although very low frequency sway does happen, the entire table moves as a unit keeping the optical components on the table in line. The ability to stop high levels of vibration is limited, so it still works best when people are not walking nearby.

[@ryPish]

I love how you always shout out cool channels!

[@marshallhorton1216]

You're like NileRed meets styropyro meets This Old Tony... In all the best ways. You are doing amazing work!

[@holytoledo760]

Marshall Horton I’m still convinced nilered and styropyro are the same person with a voice changer and a step-in actor.

[@leocurious9919]

This Old Tonys has all the humor but less science.

[@brandonlewis2599]

I was trying to solve this issue in a different context. The problem with your approach is that you're essentially building a suspension system, which is, at best, a mechanical band-pass filter. Without damping what you've actually built is an oscillator. Even with damping, the best you can hope for is to attenuate certain frequencies (selected by your filter design), and you're trying to deal with noise across a huge spectrum. What you really want to do is *dissipate the energy of the vibrations* across the entire spectrum. I think that's why the sand table design is effective.

[@brandonlewis2599]

A couple suggestions for future experiments: different types of foam. Also, there's an automotive product which I know as 'dynamat' which is used for sound deadening. It's basically a dense tile that you melt onto sheet metal with a heat gun. You could try applying that to the underside of your table.

[@fredmanicke5078]

When we make holograms in physics Lab (Laser Applications) at Montana State U. , we used a 3 inch slab of granite floated on four 15 inch inner tubes (This was a while ago) and on a steel lab table. Any vibration at a 1/4 wavelength of the light or more would move the interference lines. The set up helped us to make holograms easily. Tire casings probably are really too stiff and will transmit more noise.

[@bottlekruiser]

I considered making an interferometer as a physics project, and ended up deciding not to, precisely because of dampening tables not being accessible Now i don't use that bell very often if at all, but *this* is some next level stuff Thank you for all this diverse content, and good luck!

[@timh.6872]

One of the main reasons I love this channel is the casual "and we did a bit of quantum mechanics". Like, waitaminit, don't just gloss over the fact that you built something for about $100 that demonstrates a fumdamental property of the universe...

[@Roznin]

That's what's kind of funny too, since all things are quantum mechanical in nature.

[@peteabc1]

Meh, you can demonstrate gravity for free.. And also build interferometer from a laser pointer and a piece of glass, that's like $20 at most.

[@NoorquackerInd]

_Meanwhile, in the Double Slit Experiment..._

[@praveenb9048]

Lots of companies use little hologram stickers to make their products harder to fake. This video might help people to get around that.

[@P8qzxnxfP85xZ2H3wDRV]

Wouldn't you want to submerge the magnets in a very high viscosity oil? Then you have the magnets act as the decoupling spring and the fluid as the damper.

[@federalbureauofinvestigati9177]

This is my first video of you that I have watched and I'm impressed

[@federalbureauofinvestigati9177]

The most likes ive ever gotten in a comment

[@bradquinn4161]

A couple of things. You might want to look at the DIY electron microscope projects and how they handled this. It also occurred to me that you might want to add four more magnet setups(or posts) to cover the other axis. Things will move in all three axis.

[@TrabberShir]

It looks like you are only damping vertical motion. That is the dimension you need the vast majority of your dampening in, but you would probably see significant improvements with just a little bit of lateral dampening.

[@sanyamsmulay]

May be mounting the setup on four more rods that are perpendicular to this entire setup should do better job theoretically.

[@foolwise4703]

HAHAHA this is so refreshing :D I am just building an optical setup at work that is supposed to do much the same thing as the one you are building, just with a larger budget and some higher requirements (The idea being to diffract an x-ray beam from the interference pattern.). There its like "hey this holder for the mirror is just 100€ - good price!". And then this guy comes with some aluminium L-brackets ;-)

[@HerbaMachina]

AHAHAHA LOVE IT. Gotta say doing things that have a big budget and lot's of freedom to spend money is always fun.

[@jojoposter]

We recently ordered an optical table at work. the reason? It had the right screw hole pattern...

[@TheSwaroopB]

After so many videos watched every once in a while, this one instantly earns you a sincere subscription! Super good stuff and thoroughly excited for next parts! Cheers!

[@chsor4]

A very important feature of the optical tables are the very dead resonance characteristics. Your single plate will most likely resonate with audible frequencies - then you won't see anything. Check the resonance frequency with something like Fusion 360. I wish you the best of luck, but remember that the setup has to be hysterically still. Nothing can move more than a few 10's of nanometer. Meaning any draft will cause thermal drift. Any sound will move the mirrors. Any vibration will wreck havoc.

[@povnw8985]

I can't say I understand everything going on, but I'm really enjoying this process. Thanks for the great content 🙋

[@dreggory82]

I made an extremely good vibration isolation table using multi tiered masses dangling from a frame by bungie cords. It was better than a commercially available vibration isolation system, and way cheaper.

[@stevenryall3186]

Constantly the most fascinating scientist on youtube. Thanks for sharing.

[@kickop123]

You're quickly becoming my favorite youtube channel. Hoping eventually we get a Codys-Col-lab c; Can't wait to see more of your work, especially the spider silk!

[@sacation6057]

Yeahh! I hope the spifer silk project will give some huge process in the near future :)

[@nex4613]

I didn't know any of this at all 11 minutes ago. .. and now I'm hyped for the next stage lol

[@wmfwoodworking]

Subscribed! Just discovered your channel. Can't wait to watch more. Instant fan. I respect and appreciate people like you. Thanks

[@PaulMillard1973]

That was a very cool video, and yes, Styropyro does build insane lasers!! I'll definitely be looking forward to the next stage of your project.

[@soapsuds3093]

I may not understand half the stuff he says, but this channel is still awesome.

[@evilkidm93b]

I think that vibrations will always be transmitted to the table, whether you use springs magnets, threads or just table legs. In order to minimize transmission you need to have a proper dampening rate and make sure that the eigenfrequencies of the whole system are far away from those at which the table does deformation oscillations. In other words the table needs to be sturdy at those frequencies. I think one reason a very heavy table works well is that whatever you put on it the relative increase in its total mass will be minimal. So the resonance frequency of the system (which depends on mass) stays within the range for which the system was stabilized. It is not true at all that heavy things are less susceptible to vibrations, it's always a question of frequency.

[@strat5520]

This channel is becoming one of my favorite. I cant wait to make one of these

[@gus473]

You might be interested in "ruling engines," which cut the grooves in the masters used to produce scientific-grade diffraction gratings! Amazing machines...!

[@das250250]

You have great skills and a good mind , i enjoy watching your insights and use of basic principals

[@redosprey1334]

Thank you youtube suggestions. This is awesome and I really want to see where this goes!

[@bulldozer7656]

Wow, excellent problem solving with a great project!! Keep going, I definitely want to see your results.

[@jnamet]

Thank you for making this video, it inspired me to make magnetic levitating speaker stands, and with how you explained the build of the table was all I needed to do it! x

[@ThomasGrillo]

Really like that mag-lev isolation table! Thanks for sharing this.

[@kevinschultz7040]

We did this in my physics class. It was so much fun! I would recommend anyone doing this themselves.

[@versag3776]

"Never made a hologram before" wow you're amazing! I took 2 years of photonics and holography. We used those tables in your videos.

[@keenheat3335]

In my university's old nuclear science lab building. We setup a table suspend by six bungee cords attached from the ceiling to substitute for a anti-vibration table because some other department had to borrow ours. It work surprisingly well for how cheap it is, especially for low frequency vibration damping.

[@avejst]

Impressive project Thanks for sharing👍😀

[@antonwinter630]

wow, i ran out of fingers counting how many things i learnt in your 1 video.

[@ZacLowing]

I would use a battery powered laser so the wires don't physically affect the table and make sure none of the rods are touching the inside of the holes. I'm subbed, cool stuff!

[@victorscott6475]

This is going to be so awesome! So excited!

[@marz4834]

This channel is so underrated

[@CarsonTheGreat1]

This sounds super cool! I'm very excited to see another video on this subject. Hope it turns out well!

[@smartbeaw752]

The DIY vibration dumping table seem really interesting for sound experiment without any interference

[@JulioAvalos3000]

I know a guy that used inner tubes instead of tires. It worked well for him. He also did his holography work at night when everyone slept and was not moving about.

[@PixlRainbow]

Can you damp motion even more with a short circuited coil or copper pipe around a magnet so motion induces current that produces damping force.

[@KohuGaly]

this would actually do the exact opposite - it would help vibrations to transfer through the magnet into the table.

[@sudazima]

@@KohuGaly it would transmit some low frequency vibrations like seismic waves but damping higher frequency more like footsteps. depending on what is most damped already this may be worth it

[@KohuGaly]

​@@sudazima are you sure? Let's say the pipe is connected to the ground and the magnet is levitating the table. When ground shakes, the pipe shakes and drags the magnet with it. It effectively makes the connection between the ground and table stiffer. From what I understand, the goal is for the table to not move with the ground, but float stationary to it. the pipe achieves the exact opposite. It fastens the table relative to the ground, so they move in unison.

[@Sharpman76]

Yeah, I was wondering, is there any way at all to utilize Eddy currents for further dampening?

[@StephanBuchin]

Actually, i think it doesn't matter if the whole table oscillates up and down as long as all light sources, reflectors, lenses and targets stay still relative to one another. If everything is firmly attached to the table, what must be avoided is high frequency vibrations travelling through the table material.

[@Physicsduck]

This is epic and awesome :) Excellent work as always sir! You've got me excited to build my own optics table in the next year. :)

[@thethoughtemporium]

Thanks!

[@WillN2Go1]

Very cool. Add mass to the top table, then the vibration felt by the lower magnets will be dampened. (If those are neodymium magnets, you know it takes a lot of force to push them together. And you can double up the magnets on both ends) Also the vertical shafts might be an issue. And for finer adjustments use Fine thread bolts, and for even finer adjustments, use leverage. (Remember that 1/millionth of an inch micrometer the 'screw thread' guy made in about 1840? Of course it wasn't precise, but the concept is easy)

[@MrMraza123]

Magnetic shock obsorber table idea is good. I read some where to use sand as shock absorber for the same application.

[@dorus588]

Cool work, looking forward to the next video Maybe you could try placing a thick copper ring in-between the magnets to reduce vibration. (The idea I that the Edy currents that are generated by vibration add damping and extra inerta.)

[@codeartha]

admit it, you want to copy the holograms that secure money bills

[@draztikbtchunknown7618]

lol show me now lets get rich ;0

[@hydrus77]

I'm not even kidding these were my exact thoughts before seeing this comment.

[@JohnDlugosz]

A friend of mine played with lasers, before visible semiconductor lasers were a thing. It took something like 50000 volts to drive the tube. (I was the first one of anyone I knew to have a laser pointer, which was made in a 3-inch diameter shipping tube and about 2 feet long.) He set up a platform that was a tire filled with sand and configured an interferometer. It was impressive just how sensitive it was -- it would detect people walking around on the sidewalk outside the apartment.

[@JasonHamiltonSays]

This is the best KZbin channel.

[@id104335409]

How am I not subscribed to this channel already?

[@mattsonmccraw6767]

I only recently found your channel, and I am upset that I didn’t find it sooner!

[@CarlBurnss]

laser vortices are really cool with 3 phase laser light. and by the way felt is a really good sound damper, you could make felt rings to put your steel rods trough

[@olivialambert4124]

I remember doing this at university. They had the PhD teaching assistant do it, I always wondered why. I thought it was because it was so early in the curriculum they thought we couldn't do it. Seeing the price of the box of photographic film I'm starting to realise the real reason. Frankly I'm now surprised he made more than 1 of them, it wouldn't surprise me if he was only supposed to make the single one and he did multiple for our (my?) benefit. Also, optical tables are ok but they're not great. They are perfect in the setup and if you're the only person in the building, and they're good enough that I got results far better than I should have done (by melting equipment by mistake, oops) but anyone inside the room walking (even softly) and you can get mediocre undergraduate results, and anything beyond that becomes impossible. We would wait for lunch, make sure not to talk, stay a distance away, and even regulate our breathing to get better results. I'm not sure the last one helped, but talking and walking was instantly visible. They do make awesome desks to write on though as long as you have a hardback book to fix the holes.

[@YodaWhat]

The Thought Emporium -- The problem with this levitation setup is the lack of damping, especially at the natural resonant frequency of the levitated masses. Add some BENT solder wires from your levitated plate to the base. Deformation of the wires will dampen vibration. Experiment with different angles, lengths and thicknesses of solder wire, and/or vary the number of wires. The minimum number for damping a plate is 3.

[@GeorgeTsiros]

"and it's basically MADE of vibration" ok that was funny... subbed.

[@myname-pe2pe]

In the gecko video you used an etched material and layered the silicone over it because you couldn't exactly mimic the way an actual geckos and spiders legs work with the fine hairs...... What if you did something like grow a mold over a substance and allow it to eat through the bae layer, then kill the mold and let your silicone or whatever material seep into the fine groves caused by the mold, then find a way to remove the base layer so that way you have a much finer silicone mold that would hopefully be closer to that of a spider or gecko with the tiny hairs.....I don't know how well this would work but it was the only way I could think of without machined a base

[@dreggory82]

This is an excellent idea. You should do it yourself and become a KZbinr and make money doing cool things.

[@namibjDerEchte]

Sounds great. Wetting the mold for the silicone could be a problem though at these fine scales. You'd get effects similar to aerogel shrinking due to surface tension pulling the bubbles/cavities tight if in a liquid state. Maybe you could replace the material of one of the parts (mold and it's feeding plate) with a liquid you can freeze out/freeze dry or something. Like, let the mold eat something you can later dissolve with acetone, and freeze everything while dissolving the plate. Then you can prevent the mycelium from deforming now that the bulk material is gone. Or, for more extreme effects, use a hydrocarbon base you later dissolve with cryogenic liquid that you can vaporize again without thawing the mycelium. Like, with liquid propane/butane. You might even replace it with something you can use different phase change boundaries w.r.t. water with to put it in place of the base, freeze it, and use positive / negative pressure to liquify the water (and thus the mycelium cells, which should be dead due to tiny ice crystals), remove the mycelium's remains with a corrosive liquid (hydrochloric acid/sodium hydroxide are pretty persuasive to cells), and fill the voids with silicone you harden without thawing the base (further pressure and higher temperature or photocatalytic polymerization seem viable) .

[@ozwhistles]

Well, about 52 year ago, I asked my dad, that for my birthday, I wanted a $400 CW laser, 1 ton of concrete, 6 truck-tire inner-tubes, about 20 glass photographic plates, a splitter-mirror and some sundry bits of wood etc. I had understood holograms and was going to make some! He balked at the concrete and truck-tires - and told me to bugger-off. Got me a bike instead. Now you tell me I could have just asked for a bunch of ring-magnets? Ah well .. it has been nice to know how interference patterns are re-constructive. Few people know that .. and I still feel it's kinda important. (edit: BTW - super-glue does not stick to delrin(acetal). At best, you will get an atmospheric pressure-seal, but a little bump will let the air in and the joint will fail.)

[@techman2553]

Pretty cool idea !! - Although if you want to truely dampen nm level vibrations, you might consider working to prevent the 4 rods from touching the mounts. For that, you would need more magnets in the X/Y directions, or coaxial ring magnets, otherwise some vibrations will couple through the rods to the plate. You might even get higher freq vibrations as the rods slip and stick while dampening lower freq bounces of the floor. The perfect setup would have a complete air-gap between the rods and the plate mounts so there is no physical contact.

[@robson6285]

Yes this is very interesting! Great but to short and ow I dont want to wait weeks "till next time"...

[@JulienCope]

Love your work! Would be nice to see the performance of the table on and off the mag lev, with a constant source of vibration from the environment.

[@robson6285]

Indeed! Why didnt he test that? Good you bring it up!

[@OniMetsuki]

Nice, I might try making a modified version of this with added damping to act as speaker stands to reduce vibration into the floor so I don't disturb people downstairs. Perhaps invert the stainless rods and have oil in the feet which have a drilled oil chamber that is mostly wider than the rod except in the middle, tuned to the desired damping level. Perhaps this would help your design too. Seems super simple. Will be my first project on my little lathe I bought second hand a while back :)

[@Otto_Captures]

All the talk about super stable laser tables kept reminding me of Rick and Morty, and the 'perfectly level' clip lol

[@FourthRoot]

Did you consider hanging the surface from rubber bands? Not only would that dampen vertical vibrations, but all axes of motion.

[@benjaminchen4367]

Just found this channel and holy shit there's some good stuff out here

[@MadScientist512]

By connecting coils wrapped around one set of magnets to the output of an amplifier with a vibration sensor connected to its input one could add active vibration-cancelling to that setup, this would allow it to deal with higher amplitudes and frequencies below that of the simple harmonic oscillator the system represents.

[@ixamraxi]

I expect most of the vibration you were seeing during the day was lateral/horizontal vector forces induced from the steel rods directly on the floating plate, with maybe a small amount being induced from the wires connected to the laser. I wonder if you could eliminate a significant portion by eliminating the steel rods. A rather extravagant idea for this would be to have larger magnets on the base that spin, but a more practical solution would be to create some kind of magnetic well (think small parabolic dish lined with magnets), or tripod for each corner of the floating plate.

[@jameshall5285]

Love your videos man, you really should have more subs

[@Coltography]

I can not wait for part 2

[@moldoveanu8]

Dude, this is brilliant, subbed

[@jamess1977]

why is the magnifier anchored in the ground? and why is there a wire on the laser connected to the what tectonic plates? shouldnt it be powered by a battery?

[@jafizzle95]

This gave me the idea to make a levitating bed with magnets. Not really a practical use that I can think of but it'd be cool to tell people I sleep on a floating bed.

[@deephorizon1365]

I'm glad i got recommended this

[@MystBoy666]

why didnt you put the lense and projectoin screen on the tabke too? the way you did it they are not dampened! also i would love a comparison of the whole setup on magnets versus undapened

[@GbpsGbps-vn3jy]

Dude, you have a lot of problems: 1. The chuck plays too much 2. Never use a standard caliper for markings. Better use with longer retainer-side jaw that helps you to mark more precisely (jaw parallel to the short side). The jaw can be modified with precision ball bearings 3. With this magnetic suspension the table will have a lot of yaw, pitch and roll displacement. N-N or S-S rod-ring magnets design is a lot better (used the same vibration damping for my first cnc router) Anyway cool videos, subscribed :)

[@brandonlewis2599]

According to Dan Gelbart, cyanoacrylate (superglue) can release vapors which damage optical materials. Moreover, cyanoacrylate is rigid: you may get additional isolation with a flexible adhesive. Hot glue seems like the obvious alternative, but I have not tried it.

[@onedeadsaint]

any follow-up videos coming soon?

[@BooBaddyBig]

Your magnets have a relatively high spring rate. With care, you could reduce that by a factor of about a hundred. the main trick is to have three magnets- two magnets either side and below the one you're lifting, and to change the spacing. There's a critical spacing where it's neutrally stable, one side of that spacing it's laterally unstable, and the other side of that spacing it's vertically unstable. You want it slightly laterally unstable and then stabilise it with elastic bands or something.

[@memejeff]

damn, I have always wanted to see hologram production in action.

[@alanstarkie2001]

We used to use inflated car inner tubes with a heavy metal table on top, and do the job at about 4am to reduce traffic vibrations.

[@BN-fi9wi]

This man is a genius.

[@mariovidmar7]

I don't know about levitation but you could make excellent car suspension with safety latches to keep whole construct in place to compliment the spring out of the magnets ,neoydium magnets works the best (even that seems a bit excessive) .

[@Veptis]

I want my own optical table to engineer LWIR lenses. I even got a great camera to do so now, just have to find one.

[@thehurtisforever]

Team up with Alex the French chef guy when the chocolate comes around. He’s pretty popular and he uses science more so than other cooking folk. He did an entire in-depth series on making, tempering, and molding, chocolate.

[@RyuSujin]

Subscribed, wow. I can't wait to see where you go with this.

[@klauscampagnoli198]

Also, if you can figure out how to cast the refraction film pattern and then take a silicone cast from that. So the pointed part faces out in the end. That quantum grip should be greater I presume.

[@Tristoo]

I think if you also had magnets around the steel rods to keep them from touching the "top half" of the feet it would have worked considerably better. That way no horizontal vibrations are transmitted either. But also even more than that, the sound waves in the air will make that acrylic vibrate a lot, especially at resonant frequencies. You mentioned you'd try steel, which is great because more mass and more stiffness will probably almost erase vibrations coming from sound waves - but still resonant frequencies may be a problem. Thus how I'd do it is with two different-sized epoxy granite plates (which epoxy granite is cheap, heavy, and crazy good against vibration - often used for machine bases in place of cast iron) and some nitrile rubber between them (also great at vibration dampening). I'd like to see any vibrations affect a setup like that lol. You could probably have a gun firing beside it, and the laser would only be affected by the changes in air pressure.

[@lung0fish1]

The stainless is slightly ferromagnetic, so it provides a little bit of lousy dampening, but using copper or aluminum tube or rod just smaller than the magnet would give significant magnetic drag, providing dampening as well as "isolation".

[@CrimFerret]

THat's kind of a neat idea. It should work though you may need to ultimately add some sort of extra dampening like springs to keep things under a little tension. It should work though.

[@vishansingh7641]

This is why I love KZbin

[@ollimacp]

consider buying another Laser, cause the coherence length of diode lasers is awful and it'll be a Pain in the butt to adjust your system. There are cheap used He-Ne Lasers out there, with the wavelenght in the same area, but X Times better beam proporties, coherence lengh/Time, and a overall better beamprofile. And I think a Mach-Zehnder-Interferrometer would be easier, than a Michelson-Interferometer, if you want to radiate trough an Object to make a Hologram, cause your Michelson-Interferometer the Beam would go 2 times through your object, you'll want to project, but I don't have experimence myself with holographics, so take these notes with agrain of salt ^^

[@namibjDerEchte]

Also, Nd:YAG should be a lot better. Maybe you can find tripled Nd:YAG if you need something for UV-resin. But I can't recommended diodes for interferometric usage, unless you really want it restricted to a couple dozen wavelengths coherent length.

[@junikiadam]

@@namibjDerEchte Nowadays semiconductor lasers can have longer coherent length than HeNe lasers. (several meters).

[@jburns47]

Joe Duke have you used filtered arc lamps?

[@HelamanGile]

This guy is so awesome

[@Pedritox0953]

Great video! Would be nice if you explain why the pattern is mare and why it changes by the distance

[@Xylos144]

Hey, question. If you use copper rods instead of steel ones through the magnet stands, wouldn't you get a nice damping effect from the magnets producing eddie currents as they move along the copper?

[@Xylos144]

@YamFestival You would not want magnetically-attractive rods in this configuration, because that would cause the magnets to hug the rods and transmit vibrations directly to the top, defeating the entire purpose of the magnetic cushion. Which is why he used [a] Stainless steel (austenitic steel) which is NOT magnetic. However, SS also doesn't produce [any significant] eddy currents when a solid state magnet moves around it. By contrast, aluminum and copper are also not magnetic metals - they are not attracted by static magnetic fields. However they will produce eddy currents when magnets are moved around them. As for the magnitude of the effect, it would be small, but so is the force involved with the vibrations on the floating table. The eddy currents induced would provide a not-insignificant dampening effect, similar to some kind of cushion or friction-based additive, without losing the benefit of being free-floating and relatively isolated from physical contact with the rest of the table.

[@ergohack]

If you add some copper pipe attached to the feet and enclosing the upper magnets, you may be able to get some extra damping from the eddy currents.

[@jakepierson6208]

The Acrylic plate kinda makes it look cool.

[@odbo_One]

Love the video, however the electrical wires will transmit vibrations onto the laser and table. Maybe a battery on the table too? Thanks!