Originally posted by minoly
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Returned home from a night of Jazz to find the motor sitting still.
checked under the magnesium for oxidation, could not see any, however some of the paper towel was stuck to the magnesium so we could not see completely. We spun it up and added water, however, after a couple of hours it looks like it’s ready to stop again.
I wiped the paper towel off the bottom with fingers – no oxidation visible – on the contrary it looks cleaner! Added more calcium chloride. Connected a charging battery to it and it continued to slow to a stop. Removed the charging battery, and “closed the loop” it sped up a bit, still running slower than when we started it 6pm 1/26. Will leave it alone for the night and see where it stands in the AM from the looks of the voltage it should stop in a few minutes.
We would have built one of those nifty spinners, but we thought the point was testing the calcium chloride. Will look for some fools gold to replace the copper – see if we can eliminate copper from the equation. We’ve used dirt in the past, which worked much longer – that would leave too many things in the equation for us. the magnesium ribbon is more porous than the fire starter magnesium so maybe we'll switch to that as well - the ribbon has crumbled w/in days in the past so we had hoped to stick w/ something more solid. maybe we'll take a saw to this and notch it up...
Patrick
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