Prajna

Here's a better picture:

Thanks for your response. You can test my assertion by folding a piece of card in half, attaching magnets to the ends of the flaps with their poles opposing and then slide a sheet of soft iron between them. The sheet will want to attract to whichever magnet it is closest to but you will notice that both magnets are attracted to the sheet. I believe that what is happening is that the fields of the magnets are attracted into the sheet since it has greater permeability than the air gap and that this effect is stronger than the repulsion force in the gap. Unless I've misunderstood what you were saying.

Hi all, this is my first post on the forum so please be nice. I have been contemplating a device that is remarkably simple but, at least to me, somewhat curious. We all know that if we bring two like magnetic poles together they will repel. Equally, if we insert a sheet of magnetically permeable material in the space between the repelling poles they will attract to the sheet. Please examine the above drawing (sorry it is just a rough sketch). On the left is a metal rotor that has slots cut in it so that it resembles a disc with metal fingers around the periphery. When rotated the fingers pass between the two opposing magnets that are fixed to levers. This will cause the levers to reciprocate as the fingers pass in and out of the space between the magnets. The other end of the levers have pins that run in grooves cut around a cylinder - you might consider it as a kind of double swash plate - causing the cylinder to rotate. I imagine that there will be a cogging effect on the rotor caused by eddy currents in the rotor. My question is, how does the inductive drag/eddy currents on the disc relate to the output power of the device?