Common magnets which we are familiar with have
to poles – north and south. This type of magnets attract each other when they
are set together with the opposite poles, and repel in the other way. Magnets
with only two poles have been known for 180 years. But nowadays this thing has
changed. Correlated Magnetics Research company has developed a technology which
allows us to make magnets with multiple poles.
 | |
| Ordinary magnet with two poles (on the left),
Polymagnet with multiple poles (on the right) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IANBoybVApQ |
They use a special machine to “print” maxels (magnetic
pixels) inside the structure of a popular rare-earth magnets such as neodymium
magnets.
 |
| Visualization of maxels |
So
what does it change? What can we use it for
Actually
the sky is the limit and we are only limited by our creativity. For example, we
can make magnets up to 5 times stronger than a regular one, because more
magnetic energy can stay in an attracted metal. We can also create a magnet
which is both strong and safe for credit cards. But
the most awesome thing we can do is e.g. a spring when two magnets attract each
other when they are far away, but in a close distance they repel themselves.
 |
| Yes, we can print images in a magnetic field! |
In the polymagnet.com store
you can get pre-engineered designs of magnets to play around. They cost only a
couple of dollars each and you can choose from springs, latches and other
types.
Do you have any awesome ideas
what we could use it for?
You can find an interesting
video about Polymagnets below:
Sources:
Comments
I understand that we can make stronger magnets but I don't understand how we can use it to make safer cards? I think that there is a lot of ideas how to use is, I guess that we can improve machines that uses standard magnets for stronger ones.
It is totally not mine topic. So I don’t know what I can say. Certainly it is very interesting and it has a huge potencial. Unfortunately I haven’t got any great ideas to using it.
Do you have any real application of it?
The applications for this technology are endless. Controllable, permanent magnetic fields of your own design? From locking magnetic latches, to shock absorbers, component coupling, positional control… this is going to be revolutionary in product design.