PGRS Newsletter February 2009

•Very powerful magnets can be salvaged from old Hard Drives. •Virtually all computer hard drives have strong (rare earth) magnets in them. •

Remove case & carefully remove platters and other parts that are in the way.

•NOTE: some platters are GLASS & are very, very fragile and easily converted to SHARP pieces!

•

Here is a typical hard drive with the cover removed. The magnets are in the circled area.

Here is my collection of rare earth magnets.

One thing that you can do with them is to make clamps. In the photo below the object with the 15 holes is a piece of steel from my milling machine.

The magnets are being used to hole pieces of clear plastic in perfect alignment for gluing.

You can use any piece of steel or iron that is square as the backing for the clamping system. It works very well and the price is right!