Blog Post #4 Magnetic Rails!

This is a quick-and-dirty, follow-up update to last post’s content. It’s something that I’d obviously want to try, so when an order for some magnets came in today I just had to do it. I made ShapeShift rails for the magnet-friendly trays! Keeping in tradition of this blog, I have a bunch of grainy (it’s dark in the workshop at this time of year) phone camera photos to prove it:

Here are the two prototype aluminium rails on the tray

And here they are with a bunch of Chaos Daemons attached

Of course they can be held upside down, with magnets I was more worried about sideways movement

Evidence of there being no magnets on the models’ bases

But there are two 25x6x2.4 mm rare-earth magnets on one of the rails. The other one has three for comparison.

And a nice, out-of-focus shot of the rail underside from a more isometric (yeah, right!) perspective

Over the coming days, I will be testing these a lot, and making more in other materials. I began with aluminium because it’s about 20 times stiffer than acrylic, and I wanted each rail to be only 10 mm wide vs the Evo 12 mm. They’re bound to be weaker than nuts and bolts, but hey, no nuts and bolts! They hold these metal models quite well, even when shaken vigorously they don’t really move.

Stay tuned for more updates on this topic! I will probably be adding these to the store at the same time as the trays, to offer a complete system. Use magnets, but don’t actually magnetize the models, I think it’s a nice option. The rails are dead-simple to use, and the magnets have enough power to resist sideways movement under sufficiently low loads. These rails will have to be tested with bigger models to see how they hold up against not only more weight, but also more leverage. They might flip with a tall, metal model such as the older Greater Daemons from GW.

All the best!