New way of making a ferrofluid. Costs less than 3$!!!

Ferrofluid - a substance that's liquid under normal conditions, but turns solid in the presence of a magnetic field.

I found new way of making home made ferrofluid and I want to share it with you guys.

The advantage of my project is cost. It's way cheaper than all other methods online and it is indeed very simple.

My ferrofluid consist only two inexpensive parts, you only need old record tapes and a bottle of acetone!

Step 1 Materials

You will only need ACETONE, record TAPES, cooking OIL and MAGNET.

---500ml/16 fl. oz. Acetone. (1.50$)---
Acetone is high flameable be careful with it. You can get it at department store. It cost around 2$.

---10 music tapes or 4 video tapes. (0.00$)---
Use old music or video records tapes.You can get them virtually in any basement...

---5ml/0.2 fl. oz. Cooking oil. (0.00$)---
Every house has a secret room...The Kitchen...

---1 big strong magnet. (0.50$)---
You can get it from any old speaker in your house. Just take it apart and use it!

WARNING: IT IS VERY SIMPLE!
REAL WARNING: ACETONE IS HIGH FLAMEABLE AND NOISOME! BE CAREFUL WITH IT!

Comments

[Newty]

This does look easy. But I'm not sure I'd call $200 per cup a "very low price" when a $60 per cup result tops a Google search for "buy ferrofluid". Does this instructable produce better quality stuff? To whatnot: The dish soap is the surfactant and also emulsifies the oil and water. Apparently you can make magnetite more soluble in oil or kerosene using oleic acid, or more soluble in water with citric acid. I'm also reading a journal abstract here where they got crazy and dissolved in water particles made of magnetite+styrofoam, coated with oleic acid, surrounded by oil, coated with dodecyl sulfate.

[hcaz-301]

You can buy it for about £10 per 30ml on ebay

[aristide202]

Good comment , compliments.

[beehard44]

yes, it is cheap, but you forgot onne thing, Delivery price. Maybe it is no big deal if you live in the US, but change the setting to the philippines, it's a different story...

[Zujus]

he he ;D This is one of my first instructables, actually it is way better to buy thing if your point is quality. ;) I made better one "Real" ferrofluid so this is very simple and basic version. But still pretty cool ;)

[moris_zen]

I tried same thing but burned the tapes .. I got a lot of ferrite fluid but quality was low - Couldn't get any shape like you show in the beginning . you sure this is fluid you made this way ?

[Darmago]

Could you be a little more specific on how you "magnetize" the ferrofluid, I'm a little confused at this point. Also, why does size matter and not strength for magnetizing it?

[last_decoy]

another good substance is to ask mates or uni ("borrow") finished toner cartridges! there is still always at leased a table spoon of toner powder left in them!! (toner is a magnetic ink) mix this into the substance too. it adds to the effect really well. !! dont make it too weak cause it just flops about after the magnet then !!

[beehard44]

i didn't know that regular toner cartriges use magnetic ink a.k.a. toner...
i thought that a special toner is used for that one...

[aristide202]

Me neither , Are you sure that toner is megnetic ? I thught it was som kind of organic. Anyway iron must be just a part of the compound

[Zujus]

Yea, there was popular instructable about that. :)

[itsthatsguy]

ok the way he made the ferrofluid is by putting amagnet underneath thats what he means by "magnatize" and you do want a strong magnet but you also want one that covers a big surface area so you get a big affect Cheers

[-Aj-]

good idea, greae use for all those dead floppy disks and cassette tapes! can also use mentholated spirits. should work. it is abit less evil on your head + less flammable. also dissolves in water dont know if acetone does if that helps at all. im off to pilfer old video tape now!

[joachimboaz]

Acetone seems to have failed to dissolve video tapes for me. Did 'mentholated spirits' work for you? If so, what are they and where can I get them? Thanks.

[aristide202]

Acetone failed to dissolve my viideos too. I kept tapes in acetone a night long and nothing happened. Tapes were all of the same set. Acetone was clear , no iron oxide dust appeared, I guess tapes differ in some kind of wear protection. I' ll try with some other different set of cassettes. I tried to add nitro paint diluent but nothing happened. What about gasoline ?. Anyway I got rid of that junk at last.
What about tumbling mineral magnetite in a pop bottle with little round quartz stones. Quartz stones are free and harder than black magnetite that is free also.. You can collect nagnetite in many river sands using an magnet. That's just a last minute idea , I didn't try to tumble magnetite jet.

[psycho_3852]

READ BEFORE YOU POST, plz

[KevinAlien26]

At your local bar xD

[TheRealDutchOwner]

Never do this to a tape that still works. If you do, i'll be around your home tonight... Just kidding, but never use working tapes. VHS? Go ahead, they still make them.

[simonfman]

does it have to be written over before i do that to it? i put a small strip of VHS which was a movie in there too and when i run my finger over it really hard, my finger turns a little black. the other tapes are completely new and have never been written over

[magnet18]

most rust is actually fe2o3, dosen't change anything, just sayin...

[mrmorose]

Great idea, but it doesn't seem to work very will with VHS tapes (no clue why). We couldn't get the ferric oxide to separate from the film using acetone set for about two hours. shrug*

[tomorrowsman]

Same problem; audio cassettes worked fine, but I have a bucket of videotapes I could seemingly just respool and watch again. Anyone know how to do this with VHS tapes?

[r-philp]

I tried dissolving the iron oxide off a video tape with acetone, but it did not work. Is the manufacturing process of video tapes different than audio tapes?

[Zujus]

It could be chrome based video tape or something simply went wrong.

[joachimboaz]

Same problem. I don't know if they're chrome-based vid tapes or not. They look old, standard, and cheap. I found a bunch on the street, bought a gallon of acetone, let it soak over nigh, and nothing!. ALso, wasn't clear from your instructions: Do you let the acetone evaporate before trying to harvest your ferric powder? (Not that I had anything to harvest.)

I put a lot of time and effort into this and I don't want to give up. Could it be that the room temperature wasn't warm enough? Will waiting longer help? Or do I just have to throw away the whole ugly, stinking mess?

[jarheadwithm16]

Try using toluene.

[death192333]

Just spit balling here, but wouldn't used hand warmers work? They use iron powder that then oxides and produces heat. Thus spent ones contain mainly iron oxide with a small amount of impurities.

[kretzlord]

I made similar stuff with silicon oil and some magnetic powder that came with a laser printer service kit, its called developer. Worked out pretty cool, was able to get some nice effects. best of all, no acetone required

[turbosinaboy]

Have someone tried other than edible oil? Like motor oil...

[mr.squeakers]

thank you

[Frankiescou]

How much Fe304 Do you need for 1 ml? I need a bigger amount of ferrofluid and its for my science fair project.
Please Reply. (I got tons of Fe304 and vegetable oil).

[Nicola Tesla]

can u use nail polish remover?

[Frankiescou]

Nail polish is the same than acetone but I think that it is better to find "acetone".

You could try... :D

[YummyPancakes]

I would highly suggest working on your English. I had a lot of trouble reading this Instructable, and many of your others. Thanks.

[PikminRed]

Aww Come on man! I read it just fine. Are you some other nationality? Because your first language is obviously not English. i grew up speaking English and Spanish. Its just fine.

[schimmi]

it's fine

[miiwii3]

i agree

[budabob07]

good way to do it (pretty) easily, but for higher quality fluid you might want to try http://chemistry.about.com/od/demonstrationsexperiments/ss/liquidmagnet.htm

[123456]

Hey, I highly suggest not to use video cassettes, because there's a high probability that it won't dissolve and you'll just waste acetone. Audio tapes are the way to go.

[Zujus]

Na jei neuzdengsi bliudo tai isgaruos acetuonas :D tai taip ir pagerina efekta kad jis ten lieka :D