3D printed Halbach array holder

Alec Jacobson

October 14, 2013

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I had some magnets lying around and as I was playing with them I remembered about the Halbach array, a special arrangement of permanent magnets such that you get a very strong field on one side and weak field on the other. The only issue is that permanent magnets do not want to stay arranged this way: they'll quickly rotate and snap together in an aligned direction.

So I quickly mocked up a little Halbach array holder, which I (3d) printed. Here it is next to a Swiss 2 CHF coin:

halbach array holder empty

And here again with 5 1/2-cm magnets loaded inside.

halbach array holder filled

Here's a video of me loading the magnets. Starting with a stack of aligned magnets, I push them in one-by-one, rotating between each accordingly.

Here's a video testing the different magnetic strengths of each side against my metal desk frame.

You can download the STL model of the Halbach array holder. I "modeled" it in matlab generating first a hollow box and then adding a small 3-sided lip at one end to make it easier to load in the magnets.

halbach array holder blueprint

I also generated these blueprint-style images in matlab.