Alternate Magnetic tips and Metal powders

Posted in Custom Workstation

Hi all, sorry I have no pics for this me and my camera are NOT getting on well right now...

I've heard a few people say they wanted to do some magnetics but have had difficulty when trying to install ball joints or the like. So I offer up an alternate way to do it.

Get a hold of some iron powder. You can buy this on eBay or from just about any science supply depot, it's not very expensive at all. Kind of heavy though so remember that when choosing the source. You want some fairly fine powder, maybe 50 microns or something similar. Really tiny dust.

Once you ahve the powder, you can mix it in with your apoxie sculpt, or your sculpy etc. Now, this will make the part heavier so keep that in mind. Don't be afraid to experiment a bit. Now, once the apoxie or sculpy is cured, you will have a "ferrous" sculpture. (that means magnets will stick to it ) So, if you want pouches or grenades or accessories that will stick to a spot on a belt, and you want interchangability, you can create the item from the iron powder sculpy and viola! Attach it to the magnetic hard point you create using the magnets tutorial (basically using a router bit to set a rare earth magnet into the spot). If weight is a concern (and it will be sometimes!) then you can simply mix some iron poder in with some 5 minute epoxy and apply the paste in a thin layer where you want it to be "ferrous". (I.e. an arm, an alternate arm, removable claws, gun ports etc.)

Now on to metal powders...

Nearly any metal can be purchased in powder form. Now if you get crazy and go for gold or silver powder, you will pay accordingly! However, you can buy brass, copper, iron, steel, stainless (note Stainless is NOT Ferrous!), Aluminum and bronze powders. Now, why would you want to? To metallize something of course. Most metal powders are very very fine, like dust. You can take a sculpture like a sword made in apoxiesculpt, and dip it into a container with bronze powder, or you can use a salt shaker and shake some bronze powder all over the curing apoxiesculpted piece. Now, the bronze powder will stick to the apoxie and after it cures you can shake the excess off into a seperate container (remember to recycle!) now your sword is "coated" in bronze. From there, you just grab some super fine steel wool and lightly buff up the sword. This will polish the bronze powder clinging (permanently I might add) to the surface of your apoxiesculpture and it'll look really shiny and "REAL" in no time. Aluminum powder will shine up to a metallic silvery color with grey in the low lying areas, and Iron powder will shine up to a silvery metal color with black in the low areas. Now, it's very important to hit that iron with a light coat of sealant or it will be Red in a matter of hours. (from rusting) but maybe you want that effect, it can be cool too. This would be a great technique for custom built robotics or transformers or what have you.

oops, my sculpture is already cured...no problem, whip out that handy dandy 5 minute epoxy and one of those cheapo brushes they sell at the hardware store with the metal handle (they are called acid brushes), brush the sculpture with the mixed 5 minute epoxy and then dust it down with the metal powder, remember that only the parts that have glue will pick up powder so if you have a pile of powder on the piece, you can just shake off the excess when the epoxy is cured. Then buff with that ultra fine steel wool and it'll look great. Have fun guys, sorry there's no pics, but try this and experiment with it a bit and you'll be able to make real metal bits and pieces with little effort.

your fan,
greymonk