I am not much of a believer in free energy and every time I hear the term free energy I ask the question what is so free about it. Even if you make a perpetual motion device, you ether bought it or you made it. Is your time not worth anything, are the parts not worth anything, so where is the free energy?

As to getting more out of something than you put into it, Geothermal Heating is called 300% efficient. That is you put 100 watts into it and you get 300 watts of heat out of it. The truth is the heat always existed. You just spent 100 watts to move the heat from where it was, to where you want it. You didn’t create anything you just moved it.

Wind, hydroelectric dams, and solar generation, are going to be the closest to free energy you can get. Nature supplies the forces you can convert into useable energy by way of some device but you still need to build or buy the device. So no matter what it is not free but you can get out of it more than you put into it.

I am planning to build an Axial Flux Generator without buying as many of the parts I can muster but to do this I need magnets and it will cost me my time. This Instructable is a bout salvaging magnets without damaging them.

Step 1: Magnet Sources

Too many things to name have magnets; I get my magnets from old electronics like this Ghetto Blaster for no more cost than my time spent collecting and stripping the electronics. There are magnets in the motors, in the CD player, and in the speakers.

For the axial generator I want the biggest magnets in the ghetto blaster and they are on the speakers.

Step 2: Salvaging the Magnets

Now you can use brute force to salvage the magnets but I find gentle persuasion much more efficient and you don’t risk breaking the magnets. Since almost all magnets are glued in place I use heat to remove them from what they are connected to or the rest of the speaker.

Start by removing the paper diaphragm and coil.

Just about any heat source will do, I used the burner on my stove to heat the magnets on the speakers. This just takes a couple minutes to melt the glue.

Once the glue is melted the speakers come apart as easy as pie, place the parts on something heat resistant to cool and you are ready for the next step.

Step 3: Cleaning the Magnets

Once the magnets cool I clean them before I store them this also gets them ready for reusing. Cleaning the magnets is important as this helps sort them by size and the glue will throw off your measurements. I start with 120 grit sandpaper and place the sandpaper on a hard flat surface, and then I rub the magnet against the paper until the glue is removed.

Once I have cleaned the glue off the first side I flip the magnet over and sand the other side until the glue is removed.

Scrape and sand off any glue on the outside edges and sides then do the same for the inside edges and sides of the magnets.

The dust will cling to the magnets until you wash it off with soap and water.

Step 4: Sorting and Storing the Magnets

Depending on how many electronics you strip, it can take quite some time to gather enough magnets to make one rotor for an axial flux generator. For a single three phase rotor and stator you need four poles or magnets for every three coils in the stator and chances are you will not get many magnets the exact same size.

I store my magnets stacked; although they are permanent magnets if you just throw them in a box over time it can weaken their magnetic fields.