Second Harvest

No. No.

No fruit trees were involved this time.

My cuz Avi dropped off a carton of hard drives that were culled from servers at his place of work.

Now you may or may not know this - but all hard drives contain either one or a pair of rare-earth magnets which comprise part of the actuator arm that propels the read/write heads across the platter. The magnets can be either neodymium or samarium-cobalt magnets. What's the point of this info overload - you ask!!!

Rare earth magnets exhibit a magnetic field in excess of 1.5 Tesla v/s 0.5 to 1 for ferrite or ceramic magnets. What this means is that these magnets are strong - frickkin strong. Each one of these magnets can lift in excess of 25 lbs. And for the best part, they're free!!! Compare that to Lee Valley at CAD 8.00 - 12.00 for comparable magnets and you've got a great thing going.

And since these magnets are so strong, they make great holders for tools in my shed. They will hold the heaviest of my hand tools without a problem.

So after an afternoon with my trusty B&D AS600 and my torx bits from my Bosch set, I harvested 18 pairs of magnets and 36 platters along with assorted screws, mini bearings (from the actuator arms) and a few motors (that drive the platters)

If you're planning on going this route, watch your fingers. If those magnets snap together on your fingers - OUCH!!!!!!

Here, in pictures is the fruit of my labour (pun intended)

Box of Hard Drives to spice up my weekend - Pathetic

Gratuitous OCD shot

Garbage!!!

Pretty magnets all in a row!!

Platters!! Unsure what I'm going to do with these!!!!