Make your own ferrofluid in 5 minutes

Step 2 Get the Materials

This is just about the simplest ferrofluid you can make. You'll need two basic materials: magnetic (MICR) ink, and a household oil. I've tried a couple types of oils, and it seemd like a light lubricating oil works best, but any cooking oil will work fine, as well. The amount of oil you have is pretty much the amount of ferrofluid you'll get out--about 50mL is good for starters, but feel free to make as much as you want.
The ink is a dry magnetic ink that's used to print checks and other documents that use magnetic character recognition (check out the wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recognition if you want to know more about this awesome technology). You can get a box of it on ebay for about thirty bucks (search for MICR or magnetic ink), and you can also get it at http://www.expresstonercartridges.com/okidata.htm. It's going out of style, so you'll have to poke around a little bit to find it. It's important to remember that you don't want a toner cartridge--just the toner.

Comments

[busterbuster18724]

could you get the ink out of any pen?

[raja681]

can someone tellme the exact thing i need for the magnetic property

[zim_256]

The black powder is actually developer, not toner, the toner isn't magnetic, just plastic and the developer is what has the magnetic properties. Luckily i have one bag of used developer that has been replaced from a copier.

[willvb13]

it would work alot better if u added a surfacant, like citric acid, oleic acid, Tetramethylammonium hydroxide, or soy lecithin.