Maglev Decor

192 views

So, I have a piece of decor from Blizzard entertainment. It’s Snowball from Overwatch. Agnetically levitate, rotates, and receives power from the base wirelessly.

Was curious as to how this functions as I was thinking about finding a kit to make my own decor.

Bonus points if you can tell me about how much power is transferred, and how, so I can male powered lights in the thing I want to levitate.

TIA

In: 2

Anonymous 0 Comments

There’s an electromagnet in the base and a matching magnet in Snowball, plus some monitoring & control circuitry in the base. The magnet in the base repels the magnet in Snowball and the base adjusts the magnet current (and possibly field shape) to keep Snowball at a constant height and position.

Since you’ve got an electromagnet in the base anyway, a simple wire coil in Snowball can pick up power. This is basically how wireless charging works too, it’s just an air-core transformer. It’s not particularly efficient over a large distance but if you’re not trying to move a lot of power it’ll be fine…you should be able to run some low power LEDs without any issue.