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Troubleshooting Recording on a Wire
Moderators: kgudger, bfinio, MadelineB, Moderators
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898poirot
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2011 5:56 pm
- Occupation: Student
- Project Question: I need help troubleshooting the Recording on a Wire project.
- Project Due Date: 3/25
- Project Status: I am conducting my experiment
Troubleshooting Recording on a Wire
I have built the frame of the device and attempted to create the electronics of it. Everything seems to be fine, besides the facts that it doesn't read or write. Any ideas about what to try would be greatly appreciated. I don't know anyone who can help me, so this is my last try to get this to work.
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deleted-71588
- Former Expert
- Posts: 1297
- Joined: Mon Oct 16, 2006 11:47 am
Re: Troubleshooting Recording on a Wire
This is an extremely difficult project to troubleshoot in person without a lot of expertise and test equipment. Helping remotely is next to impossible. You really need to find somebody near you that has the test equipment and is willing to assist you in trouble shooting it. The trouble shooting starts with:
1) Is the wire you are using able to be magnetized by using a permanent magnet? If not, you need to find a better wire to experiment with.
2) Is the magnetic field produced at the gap of the recording head strong enough to magnitize the wire? The strength of the magnetic field is affected by the gap distance, the contact distance, the properties of the ferrite bead, the number of turns, and the current in the turns.
3) Is the input impedance of the playback amplifier matched to the impedance of the playback head? Is the gain of the amplifier adjusted appropriately?
To answer the first question, one end of a strong permanent magnet can be used to stroke the wire repeatedly in one direction and a small magnetic compass can be used to determine if the wire is magnetized.
To answer all but the first question, it typically takes an oscilliscope and making a miniture pickup coil to use as a magnetic field probe.
This is one of those projects where you learn more by trouble shooting it than you do in the original construction.
From a Science Fair project perspective, this is typically one of those "demonstration of principles" projects that really isn't a Science Project investigation, so despite the enormous amount of effort, it scores poorly.
Unless you trouble shoot the device to get it working quickly so you can then come up with some testable hypothesis and actually run a real scientific investitagion, you really don't have a true Scientific Investigation.
1) Is the wire you are using able to be magnetized by using a permanent magnet? If not, you need to find a better wire to experiment with.
2) Is the magnetic field produced at the gap of the recording head strong enough to magnitize the wire? The strength of the magnetic field is affected by the gap distance, the contact distance, the properties of the ferrite bead, the number of turns, and the current in the turns.
3) Is the input impedance of the playback amplifier matched to the impedance of the playback head? Is the gain of the amplifier adjusted appropriately?
To answer the first question, one end of a strong permanent magnet can be used to stroke the wire repeatedly in one direction and a small magnetic compass can be used to determine if the wire is magnetized.
To answer all but the first question, it typically takes an oscilliscope and making a miniture pickup coil to use as a magnetic field probe.
This is one of those projects where you learn more by trouble shooting it than you do in the original construction.
From a Science Fair project perspective, this is typically one of those "demonstration of principles" projects that really isn't a Science Project investigation, so despite the enormous amount of effort, it scores poorly.
Unless you trouble shoot the device to get it working quickly so you can then come up with some testable hypothesis and actually run a real scientific investitagion, you really don't have a true Scientific Investigation.
-Craig