Implanted magnet array feasibility?

edited November 2014 in Magnets
 So, I have been looking into the magnet implants and noticed many folks with them go all jedi when holding out their hands.  So, I wanted to ask: Is the sensation limited to the finger tip? Also, is the intensity related to magnet size?  The reason i ask is that i wonder if an array of tiny magnets (about 4x3x1 mm) with a hole for fibrous tissue to hold on to would be worthwhile.  Placements would be the tips of each finger, between each knuckle  (3 for each finger total, two for the thumb), one in the palm under each 1st knuckle, and 4 in an arch shape at thr base of the palm near the wrist.
I figured a small injector with a sort of scalpal tip could be made for easy implantation. Also figured smaller means less healing time as well.
Thoughts?  
Edit: Excuse the messy sketch.  I'm at work XD 
imgur.com/wdQNgF1

 
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  • edited November 2014
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  • Well, other people were talking about how multiple magnets can kind of give you a "Stereo sense" (3d).

    Also there can't be just one nerve line per Hand, if there is then how can I feel with each finger?
  • I'm not sure what "nerve line" would be. The reason you can feel magnetic fields is because the magnet interacts with the field resulting mainly in a mechanical vibrations and slight pressure. Sensor cells in your lower skin layers detect this mechanical stimulation and report it to your brain. Your fingertips have heck of a lot of those mechano-receptor cells. Moving down just one joint on the finger and the density of said cells drops quite a bit. The palm would be an area with reasonable receptor cell density. You'll want to place it on the sides of the fingers/palm. Or generally speaking in areas where you don't press a magnet against the bone. While small magnets can be rather robust and don't cause pain when the tissue around it is under stress, pushing something hard against a bone is not a comfy thing.

    About the hole... that'd probably be tricky to coat. It's also a lot less robust as the magnet would be prone to cracking when load is applied from certain directions. Best stick with a small convex shape.

    A proper applicator seems like a good idea. I'd recommend a simpler design, less moving parts and easier to manufacture.

    About finger sticking together and causing tissue trauma. The magnets are probably too small/weak to do that. Proper placement and orientation could reduce remaining risks even further.

    And yes, that many magnets would cost a lot. If you want to try something like that I'd guess you best start by implanting one magnet per fingertip and see where the journey goes from there.
  • @otptheperson I am going to try and get some cheap bars of the REMs and maybe mill them to a specific shape. I'm still looking into it. Can anyone tell me why this might not/wouldn't work? Guess the real trick will be proper bioproofing, right?

    @S0lll0s I was kind of wondering if that might be a benefit of an array. The "stereo" sense.  Figure it'd be the difference in poking an object (hardness, distance) vs groping an object (phrasing) (hardness, distance, depth, and maybe even texture?). So "HD" field perception.

    As far as sensation, I wasn't sure (@ThomasEgi Thanks for clearing that up) if the sense generated was some sort of electromagnetic reaction that was actually conducting a current to/through the nerve or if it was from mechanical force/vibration.

    @ThoasEgi Thanks for the heads up on placement.  So, finger tips and palm aren't a terrible idea, but nix the finger joint placements? 

    As far as the shape what about a kind of tiny donut (rounded ring) curved like a pringle? Maybe just a flat donut?  I'm just thinking about anchoring, y'know? 

    The injection device would only have the plunger as a sliding part and I figured the blades could be made from high carbon spring steel so they would just flex outward and generate a pocket as the magnet was injected.  No hinges or anything.  I'm still learning about surgery, but the mechanical principles seem sound; although, I worry that sliding through the blades made damage the bioproofing.  Maybe I could make the whole thing plastic with the blades being the only metal part.  I may be spitballing at this point though.

    Once I have a sound magnet design, as mentioned above, I plan on milling and bioproofing them myself.  I guess maybe I'll start with the finger tips and go from there since that seems to be the most tried and true method thus far.

    Hey, thanks for all the great feedback folks!
  • @Loptr as I said. Try to stick to convex shapes. Most magnetic materials are brittle and prone to tensions. If you have a convex shape most of the forces will result in pressure. Concave shapes like donuts, rings, etc can turn an applied force into great tension. You don't have to worry too much about anchoring. Once the healing is done the magnet will be held in place by the tissue itself. You could always chose a bio-active coating like parylene ontop of your bio-inert coating. And yes, bioproofing is literally vital.

    I sort of doubt you'll get far with magnets in terms of HD filed perception. Magnets are quite big/heavy and require strong magnetic fields to produce a noticeable effect. If you want increased sensitivity and frequency response you should look into electronics. Using a magnetometer and electrode arrays you can detect and process fields as weak as earth's magnetic field. It'd also greatly increase the range of sensation.
  • Now electronics I know considerably better than surgery.  Also, was not aware that the magnets are THAT brittle.  Somehow not shocking though.  But the electronics do sound like a considerably more amiable option given the benefits v risks.  Not to mention I could just set up an electrode or even haptic array in a glove and it all may even be cheaper.  Thanks for sharing the idea, @ThomasEgi
  • I have mine done in an array fashion. 

    Right hand: pinky, ring, and middle fingers in the tip. Then a magnet between the webbing of each knuckle including the thumb for a total of 7.

    Left hand (arm): again in the same finger tips, one in the palm at the health line fate line junction and one in the junction.

    "Stacking" in this fashion along the nerve clusters seems to give a "scopic" feel. Think of it like the lenses in a microscope or telescope. 10x + 10x = 100x and so on. Your taking a signal from a nerve and amplifying it, this will do nothing for the strength of the magnet but if you pay attention to polarization (positive and negitive) it has a nice effect. I can feel TMI Nuclear power plant from ten miles as an example. Doing them in an array definately gives a broader sense of vision. On that note PAY ATTENTION TO POLARIZATION!!! When placing them make the positive face out in your dominant hand and the negitive out in your passive. I have found this to give the best results. ;)

  • What size are the magnets @ForrestFerroX?
  • ...I was under the impression that magnets can turn around inside your hand. How can you pay attention to the orientations if they change?
  • You're making some extraordinary claims and as such require extraordinary evidence. First up how bout a video detailing all of your magnets. Stick something to each one for demonstration. Sorry but I call shenanigans about the nuclear plant. 10 miles? i can hardly feel a microwave at 6 inches not to mention a thing at ten miles. Also polarization is  hard to get right, in that A) they can turn around long after implantation and 2) the little bastards are slippery so during implant it easy to drop them or have them flip around.
  • Anyone who wants a quick and dirty way to calculate magnet strengths can go here
    Enter in something a bit smaller and look at how that curve works.

    I was going to physics it up really hard here but instead i'm just going to wait for the video.
  • The nuke plant was, THE TMI and it was exactly 9.7 miles. I could feel it before I could see it. The same held true for the hoover dam and a few other spots around the country. I could feel something before I could see it. In a few cases there was nothing there, but I could definitely feel it. Like the server farms under Ft. Mede in MD you get the buzz from all the energy just like your microwave.

    Now for the polarization! my left hand was done as stated above with silicone encased magnets allowing them to "free float" inside a bubble. They would flip on their own from time to time. The only way I can describe it is a wobble in the field, it just wouldn't sit in its pocket right and was slightly annoying. The only cause I could figure was a disturbance in the van allen belts (Earths geomagnetic field), my logic behind this was sun spots. WITHOUT FAIL I could check the USGS website for a sun spot when this would happen and kept a diary. Every time it happened there was a sunspot. It makes sense when you think about it. The Van Allen belts affect every magnet on earth because the earth itself is a giant magnet. So weeble wooble go to the USGS...yup, it's a sunspot.

    When I got my right hand done the magnets were directly bonded to my tissues via a biopolymer coating and done with a North out alignment. Now here's how I know polarization is vital. My middle finger was south out when put in because of a drop. As stated by others it's tricky to get them all in right and they will correct themselves if not happy. Over the past year it has been turning to a N out position to match the rest of my hand. It's about half way there now and you can see it when you pull the magnets with a larger external magnet. Further more the problem with wobbles in my right hand corrected itself overnight when I had the right hand done.

    I hope your ready for some real fun!!! While I can't prove the ability to feel something from so far away (if you can come up with a satisfactory test I will gladly take it), I can certainly prove this one. A standard police taser X26 emits 50,000 volts and it aint shit! I won't get into details of how I found this out, but I can tell you 1.2 million volts feels like the static shock from the dryer or carpet. THIS I CAN AND WILL PROVE THIS...video coming soon :)
  • sorry, the problem in my left hand with the wobble corrected when I had my right hand done
  • I'm just not buying the nuke plant or hoover dam. Magnetic fields lose strength logarithmically, which is a fancy math word for REALLY FRIGGIN FAST and exponentially. Let's say the field at 3" is half of the one from 2", the field at 4" might be 1/4 or even 1/8 the strength as at 3". So miles away, you get into fractions so small, they're synonymous with zero.
  • edited May 2015
    Calling placebo effect on the nuclear plant. Magnetic fields decay with the square of the distance (not logarithmically), so what you felt was nothing more than what you thought you felt.
  • Log decay and exponential decay are synonyms, bro. I totally agree about the placebo effect though. I was trying to say that in the last post, but I couldn't word it right, so I just deleted it.
  • Brah brah log is literally the antonym of exponential a graph of e^-x converges to zero (hence the very little signal strength for a very large distance) a graph of log(x) does not converge and log(-x) converges to -infinity.
  • But a log and an exponent have the same type of increment because they're inverses (not antonyms). The word decay implies that the values go from high to low. So, if we're talking about physical objects, we know that the graph will be decreasing, can't go past 0, and will have an exponential increment. So, log decay and exp decay are synonyms.
  • Log decay starts at infinity, not a finite value. Inverse is about as antonymical as you can get. Let's try to stay om topic here, yah?
  • Well, false claims aside, an array is entirely feasible. The nerve line idea regarding magnets as described here isn't where I was going with that train of thought. My suggested system of placement is in the ring and middle fingers specifically  so that each is on a different dermatome. My idea here has to do with CNS processing of sensation rather than some local sensory neuron effect. What I was thinking of was a classic halbach array.A halbach c
  • (There is no infinity when talking about physical objects)
    Okay, I'm done.

    The most succinct answer to this threads original question is... we don't know. It's been theorized that arrays of magnets will not improve the directionality or sensitivity of magnetic sense, but it's impossible to say that every single variation of placement is identical. That being said, don't expect any stellar results from finding your own arrangement. And DEFINITELY don't think you'll be able to feel a nuke plant from 10 miles away. Nuke plants don't even release that much EMF. They're built like bunkers. If anything, most of their EMF goes up through the stacks. The rest would be dissipated by the walls of the plant and every other object including the air between you and the plant.
  • There's a magnetometer in your phone. install physics toolbox magnetomoter and walk around with it. When you feel a field, pull it out and see how strong it was. could be useful. probably less so for rapidly changing fields like motors.
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