OK so the 4$ may be an under estimate since I had most of this stuff lying around my house but for most Do-it-yourselfers they should have most of these things. My goal with this project was to build a stir plate out of crap I had lying around the house and with the exception of the potentiometer I did. If I had more than a $4 budget I would have done a lot of things differently. This is possibly the most white trash stir plate you are likely to find on the internet. If you find one please post it in the comments.
Step 1: Disassemble hard drive and retrieve rare earth magnet.
Step 2: Wiring and construction
Now that all of that is completed here comes the fun part. You can really build this out of anything you want as long as the material between the fan/magnet and the surface is not metal. I used an old CD case spindle becasue it is round and a 2000 ml Erlenmeyer flask sits nicely on top.
Some double stick foam tape work great for attaching the magnet to the top of the fan and the fan to the base of the CD spindle I only had a 12 V power supply lying around so I used some resistors on the power line to lower the voltage. If you can find a 6 V supply these probably wont be necessary but I wouldn't go any lower than 6 V since these fans are meant to run on 12V. But what do I know I just threw resistors on until it seemed slow enough.
Summary:
So the final cost of this project was 4$ for the 25-ohm potentiometer at Radio Shack. The goal of creating a functional stir plate for the least amount of money possible was achieved. Later I will probably build a better one but this was a quick 2-3 hour project to get me started. There was an additional cost of the stir bar of of ebay but I needed to buy that because I am not comfortable making something that is supposed to remain sanitized. The flask I had bought earlier becasue I was going to do starters but never got around to it. Now that I have my stir plate I will start.
Any ideas on how I could make a stir plate that I could put in a oven? I have been baffled so far. I need it to be able to with stand 250 degrees F. Any help would be greatly appreciated. -Amy
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