Four day old stir bar stops working

What gives? Used it twice for starters and it worked great, now it's getting thrown.

Everything else in the system has remained constant, level, balanced etc. any thoughts?

Make sure your magnets in the stir plate are still in tact.

Cheers
Jay

Magnets are still intact, I used two rare earth magnets and epoxied them in place balanced on the fan. My bar will spin on the top of my stir plate, not in the flask though. Fan spins freely and the magnets are not too strong as they do not over power motor.

I've had issues with mine getting thrown until I figured out that it wasn't centered enough. Not so much that it was hitting the side, but just a little. When I corrected this, I haven't had an issue since. Maybe this is a possibility?

I have a couple of flasks and they worked fine but I had purchased a bigger one and the bottom wasn't as flat as the others. It would always throw my bar. I took it back and got another one it out works fine now.

I've ordered a smaller stir bar. Will test once it gets here's.

try putting 2 small O rings around the magnet (the small ones from your keg will work) and get them about 1/4-3/8" apart or so. Its what I do for our display in the store to keep it from "ticking" in the flask. I hated that "tick tick tick tick" and it stopped it from getting thrown as easy.

Cheers
Jay

L0F said:

I've ordered a smaller stir bar. Will test once it gets here's.

Click to expand...

That might be it. I had long stir bars thinking that would be better, but they were much bigger than the magnet and would get thrown. Once I switched to smaller stir bars that are about the same size as the hard drive magnets I used, it never throws them now.

I have also found that the level of the wort affects my stir bar. A very shallow amount of wort and the stir bar will be unstable.

I'm going to test some stainless steel ball bearings in the flask after work. I just find it strange that it worked flawlessly for 40+ hours then doesn't.

Amazon have a 1" stirbar for $2.95 shipped. Now that's a deal.

http://amzn.to/148ywuq

Can you turn the speed down?

So the 1/4" SS ball bearings were a no go, ordered one of those 25mm stir bars off amazon for $3 shipped got it today and works great.

I used a rheostat for speed control, and I think the poles on my longer stir bar migrated and caused it to become unbalanced.

Did you increase your speed?

Nope speed exactly where it was before, (on high) when I turn it all the way to low it gets thrown but locks in on high speeds.

I built and sold around 20 stir plates in search for a new product line to sell. This was discovered a bit by accident, but I greatly improved my performance by adding weight (inertia would be the correct term) to the motor/fan. I was using four pretty strong rare earth magnets, two stacked on each other, which were enough to counter the magnetic field of the motor. I glued a 1 inch tall by 1-1/4" chunk of wood dowel to the motor and glued the magnets to the dowel. This greatly slowed down the acceleration rate of the motor in both directions. The liquid will shear the stir bar from the magnetic coupling if it speeds up or slows down too fast. If you have room, stack a second set of magnets on the first. You'll get about 60% more pull on the stir bar.

Doubling up on magnets does not work for me. I experimented with it however the added force is enough to keep the fan from spinning.

Mine won't spin, unless I swirl the flask quickly to get the liquid and stir bar spinning then throw the flask on and start the fan motor. The spinning stir bar n liquid will boost the fan motor and work great bra cause the extra magnet pull. I use two stacked ad wel...

Lol bra cause