Magnet Advice.

[Bane Wordsmith]

So this thread is fairly straightforward.
I am new, I do not know how to play well with magnets.
Does anyone have any good advice. Or a link to a thread/site that has a good tutorial?

Your help is greatly appreciated.

[infornography]

1/8" by 1/32" neodymium magnets. lots of them.

Start by magnetizing a vehicle or monstrous creature first. They are actually a lot easier than smaller models. If you want to work on smaller models you probably need 1/16" by 1/32" magnets but those are harder to work with. I really don't recommend getting much smaller than that. I got some that were smaller and they have very little pull and are very hard to keep the polarity straight as they can flip without you even noticing.

If you are working on vehicles, I recommend using small washers for the other side so polarity isn't an issue. Just always have a magnet on one side and a washer on the other. You will need to use sprue bits to get the magnets where you want them.

On monstrous creatures you rarely have the room for something as bulky as a washer to not stand out and look awful so polarity will become an issue. Be careful that the arms have the magnet facing such that the opposite pole is facing the out from the pole facing away from the torso. Superglue or JB Kwik are good tools to mount the magnets with. the advantage with JB weld is that it can add texture to the outward facing sides of the magnets. That allows for much better poseability. You can get this same effect with green stuff or milliput etc.

I use a flat head screw driver to drill out the cavity that I will put the magnet in on the torso. this takes some patience but it pays off with a perfectly sized and shaped hole. have some toothpicks or similar non magnetic sticks to position the magnets with handy at all times. Also some magnetic tools to remove the magnets should you discover you got the polarity wrong.

On the arms you just flatten the end that you would glue into the socket by clipping off excess plastic. Then just glue the magnet to the stub.

Things get much trickier with weapon systems that involve both arms. I have yet to devise a good system for this other than put the parts in place, glue them together but not to the torso. When they dry they will hold in place by merit of the nubs being pushed into the sockets. Carefully extract the whole arm assembly from the socekets by bowing them apart. Try to clip the nubs so that they are flat along the opening of the socket, then drill out the sockets and magnetize everything. This process is very easy to screw up and the parts are kind of unwieldy to store but that is the best I've come up with.

[heartagramtc]

for my tyrannofex/tervigon and hive tyrant i used 1/4"x1/16" neyodymium magnets, and i've found they work very well in holding securely. i magnetized every weapon and arm so i can use any weapons i want at anytime. check out two of my threads ive put up both on magnetizing.

Tyrannofex/tervigon
thetyranidhive.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=converting&action=display&thread=38490

hive tyrant
thetyranidhive.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=converting&action=display&thread=38784

also Evan Quinn has some good shots and descriptions in the first few pages of his thread
thetyranidhive.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=painting&action=display&thread=37685

[nalathani]

I got mine from Magcraft. The smallest disc magnets work well for termagants and such, while the .250 x .1 work well for warriors and even monstrous creature weapons. However, I tried using those on my Tyrant's wings, and the wings were just too heavy. You'll probably need .375 x .125 on wings.

I widened the arm sockets a tad with a small drill, and covered the magnets with greenstuff if they showed. Since you can just paint over it, no one will notice =P

[Bane Wordsmith]

Thanks guys, that is awesome!
I didn't expect such detailed advice.
I'll get to work on it!

[immortalblue]

the best solution to the two arms is to use a ball bearing on the slave arm... this way, you don't have to worry about alignment of magnets. Additionally, it also makes sharing weapons between models much, much easier...