A real hoverboard (from BTTF)!

[nctnico]

I think this is pretty cool:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/142464853/hendo-hoverboards-worlds-first-real-hoverboard

Magnetic levitation is not new but they did solve an interesting problem by keeping the object in one place.

[Artlav]

I wonder what these "engines" are.
Can they be simple spinning discs of magnets?

Just tried that, with an axial flux motor:


It works, actually.
A disc of alternate-polarity magnets, spinning at a few thousand RPM floats steadily about 1 cm off the slab of copper.
The motor tries to counter-rotate, so i can't just let it float in one place, but there is no vertical tug on the lines, and dropping it feels like falling on a spring.

I can totally see a hoverboard made out of  2 or 4 of these, but i'm not rich enough to get a big enough slab of copper.
(And winding that motor was a grind...)

[kb1uif]

Hi, 
Have you tried other metals like aluminum to keep the price down?

[Syntax_Error]

Yeah, they are totally the first to solve that problem...


Professor Eric Laithwaite: The Circle of Magnetism - 1968
Professor Eric Laithwaite: Shaping Things to Come - 1972
Professor Eric Laithwaite: Motors Big and Small - 1971

I know they are long videos, and people will be tempted to skip them or click through them. If you can resist it, do so, and watch all of these. On a side note, as an educator myself, this man is a master educator and I wish I could have had the privilege to attend his lectures.

Edit: My sarcasm is in no way directed at you, nctnico. Rereading my post made me realize that was unclear.

[Marco]

If I was going to spend a lot of money and time developer something like this I wouldn't even try the spinning magnets, weight and angular momentum makes the board boring. It needs to be done with electromagnets ... which will probably require superconductors.

What does a spool of 2G superconductive wire go for?

[SeanB]

Superconductor wire is cheap, it is the cryocooling that gets expensive if you want is to be anything other than "farking huge", and even more so if you want it to run for more than a few minutes.

[Marco]

Superconductor wire is cheap, it is the cryocooling that gets expensive

Getting a dewar filled with LN2 is cheap though (the few minutes issue remains, but I don't see that as a huge problem ... refills would be fast). Engineering a board you could flip would be a bit of a hassle, but that could wait.

The pool boiling LN2 would give you a smog effect on your board for free.