3 ms·

Looking at some of the concentrations for neodymium and praseodymium... why _isn't_ magnet recycling more of thing? Certainly extracting those elements from was

Looking at some of the concentrations for neodymium and praseodymium... why _isn't_ magnet recycling more of thing? Certainly extracting those elements from waste is cheaper than raw ore.

Victerius 4y ago
I have a bunch of old (5-15 yrs old) HDD hard drives in a closet. Would that help? I don't know what to do with them.
- cronix 4y ago
  I took mine out and use them as refrigerator magnets. They are awesomely strong. No more cheap magnets sliding down the refrigerator not holding weight. Edit: Daughter really liked using the shiny platters in art projects (after degaussing with the RE magnets). I've reused some of the dc motors in other projects (arduino type stuff). All that's left is the small circuit board, read/write head and metal body to recycle.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    I have a couple too, but I broke one by letting it leave my hand too far from the surface.
  - rlpb 4y ago
    We've put away all our awesomely strong fridge magnets while we bring up a child. It's not worth the risk of him swallowing them. I don't trust small magnets to stay inside larger plastic frames, either.
  - gerdesj 4y ago
    Bear in mind that some of your more elderly relos might have heart related hardware that might be damaged by a strong magnetic field. Luckily ... inverse squared law. You are probably safe if you recommend that granddad (1) doesn't rub his chest on your fridge. I have loads of the bloody things - I dismantled a Equallogic PS6something that had 30 odd discs in it for recycling the other day. I, sorry: "we" still have four more old Eqls and a stack of discs removed from old PCs. You can break the case of a 3.5" disc with a lump hammer and cold chisel and then unscrew or break out the magnets quite quickly. I need to look into breaking a 2.5" disc. You could speed things up with a bandsaw with a suitable blade and a careful cut. (1) I'm called Granddad by two little girls, so let's ditch the ageist bollocks (po faced emoji). How about great granddad instead! My dad does sport a heart restart device (I can't remember the name) and it is probably not going to work very well after close contact with a neodymium magnet that nearly tore off one of my fingernails - OK I nearly did the tearing but it was the vice that did the holding with my fridge. [edit - formatting]
    - StephanTLavavej 4y ago
      It’s actually inverse cube for magnets - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_between_magnets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_between_magnets : “One characteristic of a dipole field is that the strength of the field falls off inversely with the cube of the distance from the magnet's center.”
hinkley 4y ago
How do you collect enough rare earth magnets to be worth recycling them? I don't mean where do you find that many magnets, I mean how do you store, transport and then process them. You'd have to demagnetize them first, right? It doesn't seem like the temperature requirements are outside of something one could do with pretty low end hardware, but the problem is that a lot of the equipment you might have to say do this in your garage would be ferrous, which is problematic. Maybe a recycling center wouldn't have that problem?
- anothernewdude 4y ago
  I would have though it would far easier to find magnets in a massive pile of trash than pretty much anything else. They stick to metal.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    I think you're confusing 'magnet' with 'magnets so strong they create plasma when they collide with each other'. If you manage to put them into a bin, they will Voltron into an even more obnoxious magnet. And that's not counting all of the ferrous things in your equipment that it can stick to and cause damage by friction or backing things up into something that isn't designed for back pressure.

Looking at some of the concentrations for neodymium and praseodymium... why _isn't_ magnet recycling more of thing? Certainly extracting those elements from waste is cheaper than raw ore.

Victerius 4y ago

I have a bunch of old (5-15 yrs old) HDD hard drives in a closet. Would that help? I don't know what to do with them.

cronix 4y ago
I took mine out and use them as refrigerator magnets. They are awesomely strong. No more cheap magnets sliding down the refrigerator not holding weight. Edit: Daughter really liked using the shiny platters in art projects (after degaussing with the RE magnets). I've reused some of the dc motors in other projects (arduino type stuff). All that's left is the small circuit board, read/write head and metal body to recycle.
- hinkley 4y ago
  I have a couple too, but I broke one by letting it leave my hand too far from the surface.
- rlpb 4y ago
  We've put away all our awesomely strong fridge magnets while we bring up a child. It's not worth the risk of him swallowing them. I don't trust small magnets to stay inside larger plastic frames, either.
- gerdesj 4y ago
  Bear in mind that some of your more elderly relos might have heart related hardware that might be damaged by a strong magnetic field. Luckily ... inverse squared law. You are probably safe if you recommend that granddad (1) doesn't rub his chest on your fridge. I have loads of the bloody things - I dismantled a Equallogic PS6something that had 30 odd discs in it for recycling the other day. I, sorry: "we" still have four more old Eqls and a stack of discs removed from old PCs. You can break the case of a 3.5" disc with a lump hammer and cold chisel and then unscrew or break out the magnets quite quickly. I need to look into breaking a 2.5" disc. You could speed things up with a bandsaw with a suitable blade and a careful cut. (1) I'm called Granddad by two little girls, so let's ditch the ageist bollocks (po faced emoji). How about great granddad instead! My dad does sport a heart restart device (I can't remember the name) and it is probably not going to work very well after close contact with a neodymium magnet that nearly tore off one of my fingernails - OK I nearly did the tearing but it was the vice that did the holding with my fridge. [edit - formatting]
  - StephanTLavavej 4y ago
    It’s actually inverse cube for magnets - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_between_magnets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_between_magnets : “One characteristic of a dipole field is that the strength of the field falls off inversely with the cube of the distance from the magnet's center.”

hinkley 4y ago

How do you collect enough rare earth magnets to be worth recycling them? I don't mean where do you find that many magnets, I mean how do you store, transport and then process them. You'd have to demagnetize them first, right? It doesn't seem like the temperature requirements are outside of something one could do with pretty low end hardware, but the problem is that a lot of the equipment you might have to say do this in your garage would be ferrous, which is problematic. Maybe a recycling center wouldn't have that problem?

anothernewdude 4y ago
I would have though it would far easier to find magnets in a massive pile of trash than pretty much anything else. They stick to metal.
- hinkley 4y ago
  I think you're confusing 'magnet' with 'magnets so strong they create plasma when they collide with each other'. If you manage to put them into a bin, they will Voltron into an even more obnoxious magnet. And that's not counting all of the ferrous things in your equipment that it can stick to and cause damage by friction or backing things up into something that isn't designed for back pressure.