I really like having common pieces in my workshop in plentiful supply so that I am encouraged to design with them.
With that in mind, what has been a good size magnet to use in your prints?
What do you think are good sizes for toy-sized magnets?
For cosplay armor-sized magnets?
I just did my first few designs with magnets, embedded and surface attachment. I happened to have 10mm x 2mm neodymium flat round magnets and I feel like they are GREAT from a force perspective, but 10mm is often kind of limiting for small pieces and yet not good enough for heavy cosplay items.
What size do you like? A couple strong ones, or a constellation of small ones? Does it really work measurably better if you stack 2? Idk what I am doing.
We had a conversation in the forum on a different post about this a few days ago.
The general consensus turned out to be, there is no one size fits all.
I personally favour 6x2mm magnets due to their availability and that they often fit many projects, I just bought another 650 of them.
They are also easy to fit when you pause the printer automatically when the design allows them to be embedded. I try to embed magnets as much as possible as they are safe around kids and do not require glue. Press fit is a hope mostly a dream to often (they come out after use).
I have used many sizes though including 20x2mm & 10x2mm in models I will be uploading later today (hopefully).
Plus:
2x1
3x2
4x2
5x2
6x2 (mentioned)
8x2
10x2 (mentioned)
12x2
15x2
18x2
20x2
25x2
Some of those as x3mm
Many different rectangular magnets as well.
I made battery cases with 3x2mm magnets. You need an insertion tool with those as holding them is near impossible.
This is before you consider round magnets with holes and countersunk holes.
It comes down to what fits best. I would recommend checking the availability in places like the BL Maker Supply and Amazon so your prospective downloaders can obtain them easily.
I agree that the size really depends heavily on the use case and there is no single answer.
I just saw that you both use very flat magnets. I think that they are great when there is no gap. As soon as there is some separation between two magnets, I hace the impression that with thicker magnets, attraction diminishes much slower than with those flat ones.
In a current design, I’m going to use a bunch of D8xH6 N52 magnets. but I have also used D3x3 before.
We used magnets in a design at work and embedded them in a part. If you use a stack of them like a pencil and mark one end so the “polarity” is correct it’s easy to push them into a cavity and then slide the stack to the side to release the end one.