I changed out my toothbrush head again on my Phillips Sonicaire and salvaged the magnet. I have four stuck to my toolbox. These are great magnets and I felt bad tossing them with the brush heads. So I've been saving them up. Very strong for their size. It's the little black rectangle on the end. It pries off with a little screwdriver or butter knife.
When you pry them out they look like this. A good size for fridge magnets. I put some on a cookie tin and noticed you can pick up nails on the other side even though the sheet metal acts as a magnetic shield. They're that strong.
These are strong and useful magnets. I like to put them on oil filters like this. They are strong enough to pick up metal fragments out of the oil and collect them on the side of the canister. I think the filter does a lot of this cleaning already, but hey, if I can keep the filings out the filter the filter won't develop as much back pressure. There are commercial products to do this but why not recycle some rare earth magnets from old tooth brushes.
I put some on the bottom of my transmission pan like this. They can pick up steel particles out of the oil and hold them till I change fluid and filter at some point. Automatic transmissions are very sensitive to particulate contamination. After shattering a steel piston in mine recently I'm happy to capture any of the stray pieces.
I've heard they can trip traffic light sensors at intersections if you stick them to your bottom bracket. I tried on a motorcycle and it seemed to work...at least I don't recall ever waiting multiple cycles for a light to change on a left turn after using one.
Cool huh? I thought you folks would like this. Free. No special tools required. The less of these wonderful magnets we use, the more small children we can unemploy in Neodymium mines of the third world. Yay!
