"Aligning rare earth magnets in assemblies." Topic

I got a box of 5 Battlefront Easy 8s in a trade.
They have a column of 10 rare earth magnets for keeping the turrets in place.

How do people keep the polarity aligned while assembling, so as to not have to remember which tank body got which turret?
It is not good to have the turret pre-disposed to pop off.

It is when they're YOUR tanks, John…

Eric

I do mine all at once.
Before I glue them in, I take a sharpie and blacken the same side on all of them as I 'slip' them off for gluing.
Then I know that the 'exposed black' in the bodies will go with the "non-blackened" side that goes in the turret.

I check several times before I insert the glue in the hole. I made the mistake once and had to drill out the magnet. I now obsessively check.

Would be easier if Battlefront used the type of magnets that come colored by polarity…

I use them with my 1/600 a/c to stick them on the flight stands. Color one side of them with a Sharpie. Just take the stack and color one end, shift that magnet to the other end color the magnet just exposed. In that way, you've done yourself what Bill suggested – colored by polarity.

I use paint to mark the two opposite sides. I tried Sharpie, but it kept rubbing off. :) Paint can sometimes do that too…

I keep them all in a stack and glue the lowest on at a time.

Plastic tweezers, as used when digging around in fiddly electronics, are good for handling the smaller ones.

What RichardDisney said.

Doug

I'd just stack them all on a stand, nail, piece of metal, etc., and preferably do them all at once.

Double-check the polarity, before gluing, and yes, they will sometimes try to flip over, especially if there are other magnets, or metal nearby, so you need to try to keep those separated.

I recommend epoxy glue, and letting it dry at least 12 hours (24 is preferable), just to make sure.

Nothing worse than doing all that work, and then creating a big mess. Magnetism is pretty strong, so easily weakens uncured glue bonds.

I punch thin sheet steel slightly larger than the magnet and bypass the issue.

I leave the two together, and scratch the back (outward facing) sides with an xacto knife. Then I know the scratched side is the one that receives the glue. Unlike marker, it does not rub off.

As KnightTemplarr says, you only need one magnet per tank/turret and some steel paper or something similar, then polarity isn't an issue.

Glue a magnet on a "master" chassis first. I use 2-part epoxy.

When this is thoroughly dry, place a magnet on top of the master magnet, apply epoxy to the top of it, then place the turret on top of it. When set, remove turret and repeat.

At the same time, reverse the process using your new "master" turret on a chassis.

Pretty soon you have a exponentially increasing pool of master-copies.

It's like DNA replication, really…

Or you could just use one magnet, and then glue an inexpensive washer on the turret, thereby doubling your magnet supply, as it were.

I have a magnet glued to a 1" washer. That's my "master."
I use that to determine that the same pole on every magnet I use points "up." Before gluing a magnet to a model or base I stick the magnet to the "master" and use a red sharpie to mark the "up" side. Then I glue it to the model so that the red-marked side is "up."

I think I just made that sound much more complicated than it is in actual practice.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

I decided to glue one to a turret, and then stack the rest on that one, and use that as the alignment guide.

I like to use two magnets for added strength.

I'd be a little nervous about applying epoxy to a magnet in a turret, and then placing it on the hull to cure, since the glue might drip down and cement the whole thing together.

I use Sharpie's to mark the poles. I use blue to indicate the North pole and red to indicate the South pole.

"I'd be a little nervous about applying epoxy to a magnet in a turret, and then placing it on the hull to cure, since the glue might drip down and cement the whole thing together."

Then invert the whole thing and put the hull on the turret! :)

I check each one three times and I glue one side and then check with my column of magnets before gluing………….and I still get 1 in 10 wrong grrrrrrrrrrrr the little blighters turn over when placing them down to be glued etc. In fact I am sure some of them flip over when I turn my back!