I purchased magnets to hold material down because the honeycomb pins are toying with my mental health… I used the lens remover to remove the lens and of course the magnet came off the remover… I slid the magnet off of the lens and set it down only to have one of the magnets i bought grab it… It completely destroyed the remover magnet! It broke into tiny little pieces!
Has this happened to anyone else?
Not the end of the world. If you live in the continental US those are quite cheap ($15 + delivery).
In the mean time, you can remove the cover on the head and the mirror and gently push the lens out with a Q tip if you need to remove it.
Now the holding down magnets are a different story. I hope you have read up on those and understand how to minimize their affect on the machine.
Be careful with those hold down magnets. They can destroy more than your lens removal tool.
I didn’t realize that my machine could be damaged… I have seen a lot of people posting about how wonderful the magnets are in several FB groups…. I just used them for the first time last night. I’m definitely going to do some more research! Thank you so much!
What else can happen? Forgive my ignorance, I am new and I kept hearing how great magnets were on various FB groups… Thank you for taking the time to answer!
Magnets are terribly useful, but if you’ve got a really strong one and the head moves over it, it can cause the air-assist fan to slow down and that will cause a print to cancel. The easy solution is to get one-direction magnets (harder), shielded magnets (easier), or put a piece of metal on one side so the magnet doesn’t pull up (magnets pulled from old hard drives already have this!)
You can verify whether your magnets might have this issue by gently waving a metal tool about an inch over them - if the head moves then the magnet can reach the air-assist fan. If the tool is uneffected than your magnets are weak enough there shouldn’t be an issue.
That being said - 99% of the time I use honeycomb hold down pins. I only break out the magnets when I’ve got something particularly wavy.
I user magnets all the time but only ceramic magnets and only enough to get the job done. I also place more of the magnets toward the front of the machine in a spot that the assist will not pass over.
Anyways, it is always good to have a spare lens removal tool because it can break.
I use magnets but purchased them on ebay I think (someone had the info here in the forum). They are from computers and have a metal piece on the top that doesn’t allow the magnetization to be above the magnet like @deirdrebeth mentioned (shielded magnets). They will hold down even a 1/8" board.
I was a poster child for using magnets and basically ruined my first machine by using them. @deirdrebeth has it right and while I have not heard that they had managed monopole magnets, they do sell shielded magnets that have ~1/6" steel on all but one side, and also I have discovered that tiny magnets have a very small field and have used several 3x1 mm embedded a quarter-inch apart in a wooden ruler will hold the ruler down strongly but it passes the waving screwdriver test. I found that any magnet that was otherwise weak enough to pass the screwdriver test was not of much use otherwise as well.
Be cautious with info from the FB groups. As well intentioned as they may be, there’s a lot of false/bad/downright dangerous info about using GF on them. Just see if you can verify something on a non-FB venue before taking their word for it.
Monpoleos is my favorite breakfast cereal. It comes in two flavors but unfortunately the boxes are always stuck together. - Kibo
While that would be nice, I was thinking of pre-shielded ones rather than monopole!
Lookup what happens when metal moves quickly through a strong magnetic field. Then think about what drives a spinning fan.
now thats good!
I’m so sorry for my delayed response; I’m afraid we’re a bit backed up due to the holiday season.
The community provided some awesome information above. I’m going to close this thread - if a problem occurs, go ahead and post a new topic. Thanks for letting us know about this!