Effects of magnatism on mice?

[NoBonus]

Does the presence of magnets cause a mouse to flip out or anything?  I am building a spinner and found the inside of a vacuum cleaner engine has built in fly-wheels, two sets of great bearings, and a top and bottom mounting plate.  But the flywheel is the magnetic center of the engine.  Will this effect the mouse?  If so, can I create a barrier or de-magnatize the core?  I have not assembled this yet, but after a few spins with my fingers and seeing the dual bearings and top and bottom mounting brackets, I will be looking for more used/broken vacuums.  The weight of the flywheel feels great and the set-up will be extremely durable and stable.  Nice.

Additionally, has anyone made a spinner from an electric engine before?

NoBonus

[JustMichael]

Photos please!!  

[menace]

if you put any unshielded magnets close enough to the mouse, its optics would still be fine but I'll bet its brains would be scrambled as the field from the magnets would erase the chips on board the mouse's circuitry.  If you encase the magnets in metal, theoretically that should shield them--pull apart a pair of computer speakers and see how they did it see what i mean

[Lilwolf]

not to metion... You better not have it close to your monitor...  Or computer (but thats easier)

unshielded magnets aren't great around computers in general...  But great idea.  

btw, a basic shield is just some unmagnitized metal around it to direct the flow of electrons.  

[NoBonus]

So, here is the question, what sort of unmagnatized metal and how much should I encase the magnets in and is there anyway to be sure I have done an effective enough shielding job?

Some methods that immediately jump out are to surround the assembly with an aluminum soda can, a thicker aluminium can (like beans come in), or inside a metal project box. But how much do I really need and does the entire shaft need to be encased since it is touching the magnets?


NoBonus

[NoBonus]

Photos please!!  

I'll get a picture up as soon as I can, but that is not that soon.  Maybe this week sometime, I hope.  I'll have to borrow a digital camera.

[Sephroth57]

wow i thought you were talking about real live mice until i read like half your paragraph lol

[NoBonus]

Sorry about that.  I would expect real mice do not care about magnatism, until they get on the excercise wheel and cannot get off of it.


NoBonus

[Inaba]

Ugg... lots of misinformation here.

First off, unless it's a really old mouse, or the magnet is like a 1 tesla magnet, the mouse is likely to be unaffected.  If it's a ball mouse, and it's a really strong magnet, it might cause some funkiness and/or the ball core might become magnetically charged... however I doubt you'd notice much.

The "brains" of the mouse would not be scrambled, unless, as I said, it was a really strong field (Even then, it would have to be ridiculously strong.  You won't find magnets that strong short of wrecking yards and MRI machines).

Aluminum probably wouldn't do much as far as making an impromptu faraday cage, either.  However, a cheap solution to a faraday cage would be to enclose the whole contraption in a chicken wire box.  It would be crude and only moderately effective, but it would probably protect the monitor if it was elevated high enough.

Alternately, if you wanted to shell out a few more dollars, a fine mesh of copper wire would be spectacular, and would bring your magnetic field down to levels that are probably below the ambient fields you'll find in your house.  None of this would be Tempest level shielding, but I seriously doubt anyone needs that for a MAME machine, unless you want to keep the Feds from knowing your playing pirated ROMs

[NoBonus]

Inaba,

Thanks for all of the info.  I also believe the magnets I am dealing with (a vacuum rotor with the bearings) may only have "temporary" magnets.  Do you know how I could demagnatize the temporary magnet?  I still have some tests to run to see how much magnetic pull the rotor has (if any), but when I was sawing apart the metal case, almost of all of the shavings stuck to my screwdriver with magnatized tip than the rotor assembly.

 Additionally, I found a vacuum motor is a fine specimine as it must be able to withstand high heat and low air intake so it is all made of metal, no plastic making this spinner assembly quite sturdy and smooth.

NoBonus

[patrickl]

Maybe before you panic about magnetic fields you should test if it even emits a magnetic field    Try to see if a RVS knife sticks to it.

Won't this "vacuum cleaner engine" be way to big to use as a spinner? Or is it one of those portable dustbusters. I have seen people use harddisk motors for this. I was just cleaning out my old PC stuff and came across a 5.25" floppy drive. The drive motor had a flywheel attached and looked like a spinner already. A tad to wide maybe.

BTW, I doubt a "chicken wire fence" will hold a magnetic field.

[NoBonus]

I took the outside of the engine off and I am left with a metal rod with a flywheel (the rotor), top and bottom bearings, and top and bottom brackets.  This will be no wider than the spinner knob itself, but it will be taller than the usual spinner on the inside.  Of course, I could just cut the rod down to size...  A vacuum cleaner motor is only about 6 inches across and most of that is the casing and the exterior magnetic portion of the motor.  The inside section is only about one and a half inches across.