Neodymium (rare earth) magnet safety

[stupoty]

Since these magnets are made from the by products of nuclear reactors(I think),I wonder if they have some degree of radio activity about them?

Also,these magnets sound like a great way to ruin your cell phone,watch,or other valuable objects that they get too close to.

You may be mixing it up with the fact that they can release thorium gas when minning them, although this is a byproduct of almost all digging into the ground. I cold be wrong though so somone more knolegable may need to correct me hear.

Don't forget the radio active surface plates all that granite and all.

I am ammazed that i havnt managed to wipe any media or damage anything with them yet but I do use only little ones for pinning notes to metal stuff so maybe thats been helping.

Stuart

 

[John Hasler]

Since these magnets are made from the by products of nuclear reactors(I think),I wonder if they have some degree of radio activity about them?

Also,these magnets sound like a great way to ruin your cell phone,watch,or other valuable objects that they get too close to.

There is nothing radioactive in rare-earth magnets and no products of nuclear reactors are used to make them.

Strong magnetic fields can damage mechanical watches but these magnets cannot harm your cellphone.

 

[John Hasler]

You may be mixing it up with the fact that they can release thorium gas when minning them, although this is a byproduct of almost all digging into the ground.

Stuart

You're thinking of radium gas. Thorium is a faintly radioactive metal. There are small amounts of it (as well as small amounts of uranium) in rare-earth mine tailings. The amounts are far too small to be dangerous (both elements occur naturally at similar levels) but of course people are paranoid about radioactivity.

 

[stupoty]

You're thinking of radium gas. Thorium is a faintly radioactive metal. There are small amounts of it (as well as small amounts of uranium) in rare-earth mine tailings. The amounts are far too small to be dangerous (both elements occur naturally at similar levels) but of course people are paranoid about radioactivity.

Ow yeah, thanks for the FYI , one day i will use the correct words but untill then it's always good to double check

i know you can run a geiger counter over a crt screen and the reading should go up as the static charge attracts the radium. We have evolved around granite and radium i think thats what helps. (Not all radiation is the same and all that)

i did take my first omega watch back to the shop and changed it stating it was too radio active for me, seriously it glowed visibly when in a lit enviroment and a friend of mine whos a physicist she told me their way way over the leagal limit for a radio active source that you can have in an educational establishment.

gota feal for all the ww2 fly boys with eye problems and the ladies who painted it on.

Stuart

 

[blacksmithden]

I was just reading this thread and it made me wonder how they would warehouse the larger magnets. Anyone know how it's done? Are they shipped in big boxes to keep them away from any metal?

The ones I've bought have come with heavy gauge sheet metal strips around them. It really cuts the power of the magnetic field. There's actually a youtube video that was made buy a guy who ordered one of those giant 2" x 6" ones. If I recall correctly, it came in a fairly large box, with a lot of styrofoam to keep it in the middle, and had sheet metal on the top and bottom to cut down on the field strength.

I made a 4 ft long magnetic pickup tool out of one of the 1" x 1" ones I had. The shaft is a fiberglass rod that you'd mount a chimney cleaning brush on, and the part that holds/encases the magnet is a piece of plastic that I machined. In order to keep things from getting unexpectedly exciting REAL quick (as arvidj found out the hard way. ), I made up a couple of sheet metal bracket type things to put on the end when not in use. Even then, I cut a small piece of 1/8" plate and epoxied that onto one of the brackets to cut the power down even more. By making them in 2 pieces, it's easier to take them off just due to the fact that there's a limitation of how hard the magnet grabs them due to their smaller mass. I always put the one that doesn't have the little block on first.Even with these little things, you have to be careful you don't get pinched when putting them on.

In hind sight, I've ordered some 1/2" by 1" magnets for my metal detecting digging tools for safety sake. These 1" x 1" ones are just too powerful for what I had in mind. The last thing I need it having the one on my shovel finding the one on my hand digger with my finger in the middle....all while out in the middle of nowhere.

 

[wlburton]

My 2" X 2" cylindrical magnets also came packed in styrofoam with sheet steel lining the box.

Bill