Massive Electromanget Matrix - Fetch #3

[@vemiz]

Keep it up guys! Great channel and brilliant consept. Looking forward to the next vid

[@dm3on]

Keep going, this project is awesome!

[@rgardnier]

Great content. Would love to see you guys wire up those magnets and share a little insight into the electrical engineering.

[@AppliedProcrastination]

Thank you! The next episode will be about electronics assembly and verification, then in the one after that we’ll take a deeper dive into the circuitry and how it interacts with the Arduino :)

[@ЕвгенийФоменко-ъ5т]

YOU ARE SO COOL, guys!!! this project is amazing! I wished to do it myself, but was afraid to go wrong way, and to lose time. You've opened my eyes for many future problems. Thanks!

[@TheConquesttintin]

Spennende prosess, jeg føler dere videre! :) Fant dere gjennom Wintergatan.

[@AppliedProcrastination]

Takk, og velkommen!

[@isavedtheuniverse]

Keep it up, this is so awesome.

[@SteeveEfnet]

What came out of this matrix?

[@ИльяЗаев-о7з]

я ничего не понял из их разговора но идею уловил четко. Попробую повторить этот замечательный проект. guys thank you very much. you are amazing people

[@raphaelkremser4034]

Can you share a link where you bought the electro magnets or at least the name from the label? Thank you! :)

[@AppliedProcrastination]

It’s in the video description :)

[@raphaelkremser4034]

Thanks! I didn’t see it. So you use 15mm diameter and 15mm height and 100% duty cycle. Is that correct?

[@AppliedProcrastination]

@@raphaelkremser4034 I believe the height is 20mm and diameter 15, but I don't remember exactly. The duty cycle varies depending on how much ferrofluid is connected in the same column (it tends to fall down due to gravity, so we counteract that by using a lower duty cycle in the bottom of a column). The duty cycle routine is still under development though :) As we state in the video, the 20/20mm magnets are a lot cheaper by the way. So if you want to buy some just to play around - we'd recommend those.

[@raphaelkremser4034]

Thanks again for your answer. I don’t get the duty cycle. When the magnet has a duty cycle of 100% it means I can switch it on as long as I want. Is that correct? If not can you please explain what it stands for?

[@AppliedProcrastination]

The duty cycle is the portion of the time that the magnet is actually turned "on" (supplied with current). So, if you send a regular current pulse-sequence, like a clock, that has an even up-time as down-time, the magnet will have a 50% duty cycle. But if you send pulse-sequence that has a longer up-time than down-time you will have a higher duty cycle. Same with the opposite case. A 100% duty cycle basically means that the magnet is always supplied with current. Some magnet datasheets state the duty cycle of the electromagnet, because they are not designed to operate at 100% duty cycle (at their specified voltage) without overheating and the epoxy starting to melt. The purpose of using a lower duty cycle is most often to reduce the amount of current that is being drawn, for example in LED lights - if you want to dim the light, you use a PWM signal (pulse width modulated signal, which is what I described above).

[@dominik8040]

Hey, great work, after that much time playing with them, would You already decide on other (different power/ size) electromagnets? I would like to recreate Your project in near future.

[@AppliedProcrastination]

It really depends on which trade offs you are willing to make. For us, this size was the best trade off between power and pixel density we could get, but these EMs would be too weak for most commercial ferrofluid containers. You need to suspend the ferrofluid in a highly buoyant liquid in order for it to work with such small electromagnets

[@gazzacroy]

wow hours of work.. have you tried the magnetic liquid in mineral oil? just mite make it lighter???

[@AppliedProcrastination]

Fair point. We are happy enough with our current solution, but we might experiment in the future anyway

[@BuddyCrotty]

Did you guys really wire these up twice for the timelapse plus the stop-motion shots?! That's some dedication =)

[@AppliedProcrastination]

Haha, almost! We did a few columns twice (so 12-24 magnets), but otherwise we just turned the frame 180 degrees around

[@BuddyCrotty]

@@AppliedProcrastination working smarter!

[@Mescalineinthesun]

Really cool

[@Jandodev]

I think I found the perfect game to play on this

[@KristerBorge]

❤️❤️❤️❤️

[@cirocativo]

Have you ever heard of Regium Chess? I mean, you guys could replicate what they didn't do! Use these electromagnets to move chess pieces, I've always woundered if it was possible to make this happen

[@Dunsay]

Woohoo, Frifond!

[@richardward6747]

I'm attempting a prototype that uses 256 coreless electromagnets on a 1mm bit of acrylic, wireing them straight to an array of individually addressable RGB LEDs, the acrylic surface is charged with static electricity by a little black Chinese wonder and it's to be programmed to ripple the magnetic flux in a checkerboard pattern regarding the pole orientation, along the acrylic surface, to move the static charge with it's undulatuon.. a magnetically shielded wire from one end to the other re-cycles the charge.. should be a lot better than a silly ion thruster.. gona be testing different surfaces. Everyone is more than welcome to copy me, tho never at the cost of disenabling of another to also. X

[@h7opolo]

excellentiomo

[@ShopperPlug]

Why did you first choose to use aluminum plate mounting? Does it help with some magnetic strength or better magnetic distribution? Or was it because you guys wanted a strong plate mounting structure? 6:16 - Oh god... wiring that thing is straight hell, I would never ever do that type of wiring job, would rather read a book... you could've designed the wiring system using multilayer PCB and request for electromagnets that has pins rather than wires so that you can solder them to the PCB which is fast and easy by using low temperature solder paste and an oven. Getting multilayer PCBs made is extremely cheap and fast from china using express shipping. I seriously can not comprehend why you guys never ever thought of using PCB route... it seems you guys are electrical engineering students. Edit: Alright you wanted a Cooling mechanism, matter of fact you can using one side as an acrylic plate and the other side as an aluminum plate, drill water channels and magnet holes and now you have a water cooled mounting structure.

[@AppliedProcrastination]

We couldn’t find a source for electromagnets with pins instead of cables in the size and price range we were aiming for. We wanted sub Ø2mm EMs and couldn’t afford more than $3-4 per piece (incl. shipping and import). When you need 252 of something the price is a really important factor. Most of our suboptimal decisions are based on price, availability (either of material or tools), or holes in our skill set.

[@ShopperPlug]

@@AppliedProcrastination have you tried or ever think of using PCB square coils as a magnetic source? I think 6-10 layers of PCB coils can produce a strong magnetic field and attract the ferrofluid.

[@AppliedProcrastination]

We haven’t, but the KZbin expert on PCB-coils, Carl Bugeja, has tried it and the field isn’t nearly strong enough.

[@ShopperPlug]

@@AppliedProcrastination yea… if you consider Carl as a “pcb coil expert”, there’s no hope of me asking you lol.

[@AppliedProcrastination]

Why the condescending tone? We’d love to use PCB-mounted EMs or PCB-coils, but our research has deemed both solutions impractical or too costly. If you have leads to resources we may have missed we’d love to hear about them, but we don’t have time for your attitude or disrespect. Neither towards ourselves or anyone else who put their hard work out on the internet for free.

[@toldfable]

guys stop procrastinating and release an update already

[@rgardnier]

Great content. Would love to see you guys wire up those magnets and share a little insight into the electrical engineering.