Saturday, September 19, 2009

Shoot-the-Target: I fixed it!

I took down the monkey gun demo today and decided to open up the malfunctioning Target Dropper box.

As mentioned in a previous post, the magnet in the drop box had mysteriously weakened so that it could barely hold a short chain of paperclips.

Upon opening the box, I discovered a neodymium magnet attached to a random point on an inner wall. I pulled it out and set it on the back of the electromagnet. I reassembled the box and gave it a try.

It worked! Still a bit weak, but more like 80% than the 1% it had been.

So it appears that the supermagnet that's used to give the electromagnet some permanence had popped off. It appears to have been glued. If I need to repair it again, I'll probably use a new supermagnet and maybe add a bit of glue. For now, I'm happy I was able to effect a repair.

5 comments:

Eric W. said...

I think you mean "effect", not "affect".

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/effect#Verb

Dean Baird? Wrong, twice in one week? Now I've seen everything.

Dean Baird said...

No idea what you're talkin' about, Eric.

Eric W. said...

A genius is rarely understood by his contemporaries.

stevieray said...

Dean - I think the "fix" has more to do with the effect of the "energy field" associated with your magnetic personality - just stay away from de-Gaussing apparati.

Brother Doug said...

Gray tape, man. And maybe a whittled No.2 pencil somewhere in the mix.