Magnetic Acrylic Rubik's Cube

Step 7 Glue in the magnets

Without prior testing, I settled on Duco Cement from my local hardware store. You can see in the first two images that I'd put a bit of the glue in the hole, then push the rod of magnets into it, and slide the rod sideways to leave the tip magnet in the hole - always remembering to check the polarity.

In the third image, you'll see an interesting phenomenon of my materials choices. Duco Cement eats through faults in acrylic. As such, the circle at the end of the bored shaft, where it meets the crown, would "bloom" outward at a roughly 45 degree angle cone. Quite pretty, though not what I intended. Some of these blooms got pretty complex and wavy, but most just appeared like the conical cloud of vapor that trails supersonic jets. As the glue rehardened each time, the structural integrity of the cubes was not compromised. If I make another cube, I'm going to test other glues to find a nice clear one that doesn't do this, but still has this kind of strength and fast-drying time (30 seconds or so). It remains an interesting thing to see, however.

Be sure the 6 magnets you glue into the central piece have matching outward-facing polarities.

Comments

[MattDSwainJr]

LocTite makes a UV cured adhesive that cures with the help of a special UV light it's practically invisible. Although for home use I think a glob of super glue should do the trick. Anyway really cool Rubiks Cube.

[gork]

Neat little cube toy. I had two suggestions to solve problems you had: 1) You should be using a Forstner bit to make the holes. The edges are straighter and the bottom is flat. If you only ever want to use the bit on a press you can file out the central point so you get a 100% flat hole bottom as well. 2) Instead of using a bit stop you should use the stop on your drill press to set the hole depth. Ideally you only want to use bit stops when hand drilling. If your drill press does not have a stop you can rig one up with various jigs. Although it appears your press has a depth gauge you should probably not really rely on it. A rotary gauge will give you much better accuracy and you might be able to make yourself one. }}}

[sumplesnoob]

Are you a profesional photographer?

[Vertigo666]

so what's in the middle?