At 12:00 -0700 7/9/10, john CARMONNE wrote: > For fear of sounding dumb. Just what does a person do with the magnets? > Where are they in the drive.
One of the reasons for really small disks is that magnets made with rare-earth elements - Neodymium and Lanthanum in particular - can be much stronger than Alnico, soft iron, or ferrites of the past. I believe the alloy of choice for disks these days is Neodymium-Cobalt-Boron. The magnets react with electric current in a coil of wire on the read/write head for positioning along the radius of the disks. It's a lot like a voice coil in a speaker. There is a pivot point near a corner and the magnets will be just inside of that. Those rare earth elements are also finding use in the likes of a Toyota Prius motor/generator in larger quantities. A very real financial problem is showing up in that China is pretty much the only supplier of rare earth elements these days. It will require something like another gold rush to get the US of A up to snuff and I donno about other countries. -- --> From the U S of A, the only socialist country that refuses to admit it. <-- -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
