Magnetic Minibots and How You Can Do it Too

[Akash Rastogi]

Hi CD,

So the company that we bought our magnets from for 3553 was gracious enough to post some valuable information about the use of magnets on minibots.

This thread is for those of you concerned about teaching students the physics behind these minibots. Well, here ya go. Enjoy and I hope the students learn something from this.


http://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?...climbing-robot

This is a great Philadelphia company, and we thank them for their cooperation and guidance during our testing/experiment process.

Thank you again K&J Magnetics!

[billbo911]

Nice article. What a great way for a vendor to work directly with us on a very specific application!

[Brandon Holley]

I saw this article a couple of days ago on their site, but forgot to post it up on delphi.

We ordered our magnets from here. They are a great company.

-Brando

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

I saw this article a couple of days ago on their site, but forgot to post it up on delphi.

We ordered our magnets from here. They are a great company.

-Brando

Brandon,

Which ones did you end up purchasing? Just curious.

[Gdeaver]

Yes, they were very responsive to our needs. We ended up using these.
http://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetai...088DCS&cat=173
After experimenting with them we ended up not needing magnets in our minimalist final design.

[Justin Montois]

That is a great article. That's where we got our magnets from as well. Great company.

[Patrick Seeney]

Excellent article...we are using magnets from this company as well, but not the same as everyone else. This company has excellent turn around for shipping the magnets.

[JosephC]

We didn't actually order our parts from the company but that site just helped us finish our minibot!

Any of you going to the MI Troy competition will see, like the Las Guerrillas.

[nlknauss]

Great article! Thanks for sharing this resource. I'm looking forward to seeing 3553's robot in action at Philadelphia.

Nate

[LLogan]

We ordered from this company too.

We at first ordered 4 magnets. they came all together in one giant bundle with 1/8in plastic spacers in between them. One of our mentors wasn't careful when trying to pry them apart and immediately snapped one into three pieces as they smacked into each other. Woops.

I made the same mistake about 5 minutes after. So, we had two complete magnets to work with.

They do their job very well for our minibot.

We placed an order for another 6 the other day and asked for each magnet to be individually packaged and wrapped. They obliged (for no extra fee, I think). Each magnet came wrapped with some sort of packing wrap (?) and could not attract each other through the wraps. Which is a very good thing.

TL;DR: When handling neodymium magnets, be very careful, and don't let them accelerate into each other. Ask them to individually package your magnets too!

[Gdeaver]

This year many teams have focused on KJM magnetics to stick the mini bot on the pole. Magnets can have other uses on our robots. Some times teams have a device that can lock up, jam, or bind resulting in a broken gear train or smoked motor. Take some KJM magnets, add some design creativity and you can have a very cheap and effective magnetic slip clutch. Why would a magnetic slip clutch be better than a classic friction clutch? Keep this thought in your back pocket for future years.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Brandon,

Which ones did you end up purchasing? Just curious.

Just saw this, sorry for the delay.

I'll PM you the link.

-Brando

[rsisk]

I thought I would let the folks at K&J know they were getting kudos from the CD community, here is there response....

Excellent! We've had a lot of fun answering questions for students and mentors alike, and putting together that post. The only thing I'm sorry about is not building one of our own! I might have to look into mentoring next year myself.

It's especially fun to be emailing about concepts that I've seen professional engineers still working on. Describe the problem theoretically first, prototype fast, quicker iterations mean more chances for improvement, design in flexibility for adjustment, especially in the face of tight deadlines. Whether or not these kids get into engineering, what a great, hands-on lesson in critical thinking.

Best Regards,

Michael Colalillo
K&J Magnetics, Inc.
www.kjmagnetics.com

Based on their area code, I think they are near Philadelphia, so I invited them to the Philly regional next week. So keep an eye out for some folks looking closely at the magnets on your minibots

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by rsisk

I thought I would let the folks at K&J know they were getting kudos from the CD community, here is there response....



Based on their area code, I think they are near Philadelphia, so I invited them to the Philly regional next week. So keep an eye out for some folks looking closely at the magnets on your minibots

Wow what an awesome response! I will make sure I stay in touch with Michael and see if he would like to work with 3553! Thank you Richard.

[Sovietmagician]

Team 694 also decided to go with magnets from KJM to make their Minibot. A team at the New York city regional told me about K&J and I immediately checked them out and ordered magnets. I wish had seen this article earlier, its got loads of really helpful information. I always love it when companies get into the FRC spirit.
-Ariel