Great work! The video does state this clearly that it was about the journey first and foremost and that's great, but yet to me it feels unfinished when it ends as soon as we get to the really fun stuff, so it's complete in the sense of it being well-produced, publishable content, but it's uploaded as soon as it's publishable, and I'm left with "what, that's it?", as I've mostly been looking at milling and some coating. I get this often with similar videos today. Either it's just me (entirely possible) or it's a sign of the times.
It takes some sifting to find some really good “making” channels on YT. I’ve watched this video and while I applaud author’s efforts, I don’t consider this type of content “good enough” to be subscribing. It felt overproduced and with too epic tone, while giving too little detail on the process, the experimentation, the actual solution (he said ratios are important, but what ratios did he use) and no thorough explanation of what is happening.
The golden standard is Applied Science channel, of course, but there are some smaller channels with similar vibe.
A lot of honest projects are going to end this way, with a sort of half-failure. YouTube channels which show it anyway are more credible than the ones who seem to always succeed at whatever they're trying.
Yeah, I was hoping he'd get it at least to a somewhat usable state where you can at least load a small file (maybe with some file system sector fiddling).
I watched the video when it made the rounds last week. I was impressed with the work and the results. I did wonder, though, if a 5 1/4" disk would have been an easier initial goal, seeing as how the outer envelope is a lot less involved than a 3 1/2".
I was expecting a 5 1/4" or maybe 8". But the video was sponsored by a CNC machine company, so 3 1/2" hard shell form factor (the only popular one that can be CNC'd) makes sense. :)
I don't know how he got it, but if I were faced with that problem myself, I'd try this:
1. dissolve a bunch of rust in hardware-store hydrochloric acid,
2. dilute it in a lot of water,
3. into a similar quantity of water, mix an large excess of baking soda to neutralize the acid,
4. rapidly mix the two solutions together to precipitate a very fine iron hydroxide powder,
5. decant the powder and/or filter it with coffee filters,
6. rinse it to remove the remaining salt and sodium carbonate,
7. heat it to convert it to Fe₂O₃, and
8. heat the Fe₂O₃ in a sealed container with enough carbon to reduce it to Fe₃O₄.
I don't know if this would actually work, because my entire education in chemistry consists of watching NileRed videos in which the primary lesson is that nothing works the way you think it will. Wikipedia has some more-promising-sounding approaches that require materials I don't have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron(II,III)_oxide#Preparation
> use ammonia to promote chemical co-precipitation from the iron chlorides: first mix solutions of 0.1 M FeCl₃·6H₂O and FeCl₂·4H₂O with vigorous stirring at about 2000 rpm. The molar ratio of the FeCl₃:FeCl₂ should be about 2:1. Heat the mix to 70 °C, then raise the speed of stirring to about 7500 rpm and quickly add a solution of NH₄OH (10 volume %). A dark precipitate of nanoparticles of magnetite forms immediately.[9]
You can also buy it as a pottery pigment or as a black "ferrite" pigment for mixing into whitewash to make black paint, but if the particles are too coarse, you probably can't mechanically grind them down to be small enough.
You can get ferrous sulfate from the garden store as a fertilizer, and if you get it wet it likes to oxidize to ferric sulfate with the air. Or you can encourage it with hydrogen peroxide. I wouldn't be surprised if that would work as a replacement for the ferrous and ferric chloride mix in the Wikipedia recipe.
While it is a great video, it doesn't seem like he actually made a viable floppy disk in the end. Even if he didn't though, it would have been great to say what was actually achieved in the end: what write density was achieved? Could we write and recover even 1KiB of data?
Readit News
The golden standard is Applied Science channel, of course, but there are some smaller channels with similar vibe.
https://youtu.be/TBiFGhnXsh8?si=wra84H0R8fy2XCnd
First line: "[YouTuber] PolyMatt"
The article just advertises the video. This post could be just the video.
1. dissolve a bunch of rust in hardware-store hydrochloric acid,
2. dilute it in a lot of water,
3. into a similar quantity of water, mix an large excess of baking soda to neutralize the acid,
4. rapidly mix the two solutions together to precipitate a very fine iron hydroxide powder,
5. decant the powder and/or filter it with coffee filters,
6. rinse it to remove the remaining salt and sodium carbonate,
7. heat it to convert it to Fe₂O₃, and
8. heat the Fe₂O₃ in a sealed container with enough carbon to reduce it to Fe₃O₄.
I don't know if this would actually work, because my entire education in chemistry consists of watching NileRed videos in which the primary lesson is that nothing works the way you think it will. Wikipedia has some more-promising-sounding approaches that require materials I don't have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron(II,III)_oxide#Preparation
> use ammonia to promote chemical co-precipitation from the iron chlorides: first mix solutions of 0.1 M FeCl₃·6H₂O and FeCl₂·4H₂O with vigorous stirring at about 2000 rpm. The molar ratio of the FeCl₃:FeCl₂ should be about 2:1. Heat the mix to 70 °C, then raise the speed of stirring to about 7500 rpm and quickly add a solution of NH₄OH (10 volume %). A dark precipitate of nanoparticles of magnetite forms immediately.[9]
You can also buy it as a pottery pigment or as a black "ferrite" pigment for mixing into whitewash to make black paint, but if the particles are too coarse, you probably can't mechanically grind them down to be small enough.
You can get ferrous sulfate from the garden store as a fertilizer, and if you get it wet it likes to oxidize to ferric sulfate with the air. Or you can encourage it with hydrogen peroxide. I wouldn't be surprised if that would work as a replacement for the ferrous and ferric chloride mix in the Wikipedia recipe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_mill
but yes, you can certainly just buy fine Fe3O4
[1] https://www.ninakalinina.com/
[1] https://www.ninakalinina.com/links.htm / "DIY tapes and floppies"