Big Gluing Day

Today I glued the magnet+dumbell assemblies on the optics adapters.

Unlike magnet gluing on a 3" optic where one can use a magnet gluing fixture, here I had to position the magnets manually. There is a complication though: the magnet is much heavier than the dumbell making it almost impossible gluing the dumbell side down onto the adapter since it is very unstable in this position. A workaround is to put the magnets on some paramagnetic sheet so that the magnets stick to it and then flip it over and glue it on the adapter dumbell sides down.

The problem here is that I need to position the magnets relatively accurately on the metal sheet. To make things slightly easier I printed some drawings of the positions of the magnet, laminated them, and cleaned them to have a decent starting point (attachment 1).

For each adapter:

1. I applied glue to the 4 circular grooves at the back of the adapter.

2. I picked 4 magnets (2 north, 2 south). Trying to match their strength.

3. Made a note of which magnets I picked for which adapter in the magnet+dumbell spreadsheet.

4. Clean the dumbells' surfaces when necessary.

5. Put the magnets on a laminated magnet-positions-drawing on a metal sheet that was precleaned in the right order.

6. Flip the metal sheet and position it on the adapter such that the dumbells go as precisely as possible into the circular grooves on the adapater.

7. Adjust the magnets' positions by pushing them slightly with a non-magnetic tip.

Attachment 2 shows the numbering on the adapters for future tracking.

I also glued some magnets and aluminum rods to side blocks. Next gluing session I will glue magnets to the aluminum rods. Probably some dumbells will not stick well to the adapters. These will have to be cleaned and reglued as well.