Banner day today on Animeyes! After scouring the net over the weekend for 5mm x 5mm neodymium rod magnets for my homerolled solenoids, and running into ebay shipping roadblocks and crazy prices and fees, <breath>, I found an amazing supplier of magnets right here in Waterloo.

Indigo Instruments over on Lexington Ct has some crazy cool array of neo magnets, in stock. I ordered by phone this morning and picked them up with cash in hand late this afternoon. Friendly staff. Reasonable prices. Wide selection. Please note: it’s not walk-in. You need to order by phone and arrange a time for pickup. Giddiup.

I picked up some 5mm x 5mm and 5mm x 7.5mm rod magnets to test drive. The 5mm mags perfectly fit the drinking straws I’m using for the plunger! These are N42 grade, so stronger than I’ve used so far, so I’d like to see how they perform in the straw solenoid before buying 200 of them. This is so delightful to find this local supplier. It’s like the first time I discovered the Metal Supermarket.

Click through for laser news…

A very very Good Friend of mine with a laser cutter totally rocked Animeyes toward completion tonight. He cut out the mounting board I had designed in Illustrator (which he subsequently redesigned).

Can you believe how freakin’ clean these cuts are? I clapped my hands like a child. Joy! BTW, this is $1.25 20×30″ foamcore from Dollarama. It’s like Lego: you just gotta always have some.

‘Cause this was the best I could achieve with my dremel. Shaggy.

And of course once you have the virtual design + a laser, you’re only minutes away from many precisely cut holes, exactly spaced. This reinforced the whole value in a laser cutter for me.

And what can cut foamcore can certainly cut paper. Here are the cutouts of the paper-craft eyelids I settled on. This is way faster than me cutting them out by hand. <1 minute by laser vs. 15 minutes by hand.

Great joy today.
DW