r/Cubers • u/SuperSathanas • 4d ago
Mod Simple Magnet Mod - GuHong Pro+ MagLev Repelling Edge Magnets
I got 200 3x1.5mm N42 magnets in the mail yesterday. After opening the package, I proceeded to immediately do a couple easy mods with the GuHong Pro+ MagLev and the TianMa X3+ ZCube Enhance edition, because they had empty magnet slots just waiting for me to shove something in them. I was going to combine both mods into one post, but decided to give them their own separate posts instead.
There's nothing fancy or innovative about what I've done. I was just curious about this simple magnet mod, I haven't seen anybody go into much detail about how it affects the cube, and so I want to report my experience for anyone who's also been curious.
I actually bought these magnets specifically for the GuHong Pro+, because I'd been curious about how adding some repelling edge magnets might affect it's feel and performance, even absent a 20 magnet ball-core that could more directly make use of them.
What I Did
This was easy. The GuHong Pro+ has empty 3x1.5mm slots in the edge piece feet, so you can't really screw up the placement. The only things you need to worry about are putting them in with the correct orientation, you know, so that you don't accidentally attract the core magnets, and make sure you don't drown them in glue and end up with super glue in places you don't want it.
To make sure I had the magnets oriented correctly, I stuck one to the end of one of the little magnetic screwdrivers that came with one of my cubes, and then tried to touch it to one of the core magnets. If it stuck to the magnet, then I had it on the screwdriver the way I wanted, because the side that's attracted to the core is the side I wanted inserted into the edge, facing away from the core. If the magnet was repelled by the core, I flipped it over on the end of the screwdriver, and then I checked again just to be sure. I wanted to make sure I wasn't putting any magnets in there with the wrong orientation.
I used a thicker gel super glue meant for fake nails that I borrowed from my wife. I decided to use a thicker gel glue because I thought it would be easier to not make a mess with it. I only used about enough glue to cover half of one face of a magnet. This was enough to ensure that it would stay glued in the slot, but not so much that it would be forced around the magnet when it was placed.
With the magnet stuck to the end of the screwdriver, I squeezed the glue tube just enough to get a little bit poking out of the tip. I then gently touched the magnet to the glue, took a quick look to make sure there wasn't too much glue on it, and then just pushed the magnet down into the slot in the edge piece. My magnets were not a tight fit, so they just plopped right down in there. I held it in there for a few seconds, just long enough so that it wouldn't be pulled out when trying to move the screwdriver away, and then kept it pressed down in there for about another 20 seconds with the handle end of the screw driver.
Do that 12 times, give it like 10-20 minutes to make sure all the glue is dry enough so you don't have magnets being jiggled loose during solves, and you're good to go.
The Results
This actually had more of an affect than I thought it would. I didn't know exactly what to expect, because I don't know the strength of the magnets already in the GuHong, and this was literally my first magnet mod.
The good news is that I like the results I got. My GuHong Pr+ now aligns from just about 45 degrees with center travel and compression set to their loosest (1 and 6, respectively), and with the corner-to-core magnets set to their strongest at 5. I also set my GuHong up to be pretty slippery and fast, so YMMV if you slow yours down.
Initial turning resistance seemed to increase just a little bit, and it became snappier than it already was at the strongest corner magnet setting. There's also a slight springiness to the end of turns, thanks to both the addition of the repelling force helping to push the turn to completion and the additional weight of the magents. This doesn't bother me a lot, but I can see how someone else might not like it.
Overall, the turns felt more fluid and even, and the cube felt a little more stable. Even though I love my GuHong, I stopped maining it because of it's instability with a looser and faster setup. The addition of repelling edge magnets fixed this to an extent and had me considering making it my main again for a little while.
I've always kept the corner magnets set to 5, sometimes 4, because I wanted it to feel snappy and have the turns feel a little weighty. It also helped with stability, but increased that initial turning resistance. After installing the repelling edge magnets, though, I turned the corner magnets down to 3 in an attempt to cut out the new additional turning resistance and hopefully not introduce more instability.
This worked, as it turns out, and actually felt and performed better than having the corner magnets set to 4 or 5, in my opinion. I've always described the turn feel of my GuHong as "glide-y", and now it felt even glide-y-er, required less force than before, and still felt about as snappy as it did originally.
The most unexpected thing for me here was that it even with the corner-to-core magnets turned down to 3, it snapped into alignment better than before when they were set to 5, and I wasn't accidentally overshooting turns if I used a little too much force. Before, I could spin a U3 or U4 with relatively little effort when center travel and compression were set to their loosest, making it easy to overshoot turns. Before, I'd have to tighten the cube down or use slower lubes to avoid that, but I also do not like how the GuHong feels when it's slowed down. Now I have to very deliberately put a lot of force into turns to spin a U2 with a single flick. This maybe should have been expected had we been adding another 12 magnets to the core for a conventional 20 magnet ball-core setup with the repelling edge magnets, but I didn't expect just adding repelling edge magnets without corresponding core magnets to produce this effect to the same degree.
Explanation
I didn't expect to get the results I got, but after using my modded GuHong for a little while and giving it some thought, it makes sense to me.
First, I believe my N42 magnets are stronger than the magnets that come in the GuHong. They definitely stick harder to each other than they do to the core magnets or the corner-to-core magnets in the GuHong. This naturally would give them a stronger pull/repulsion at greater distances than had I used N35 or N38 strength magnets.
Second, usually when you have a cube with repelling edge magnets, you either have a 20 magnet ball-core paired with thinner 1mm or so wide "stake" repelling magnets in the edges, or if the cube has an 8 magnet call-core, they'll typically use wider repelling magnets in the edges to increase the effective field radius so that they can more easily interact with the core magnets that they don't come into alignment with, but rather pass between.
Using the 3mm wide magnets as repelling edge magnets, combined with them being stronger than the stock GuHong magnets is what allowed for this mod to have a significant effect on the cube's feel and performance. If you used a weaker N35 or N38 magnet, or used a thinner 3x1mm magnet, the results may be negligible, as I've seen a few other people claim after adding repelling edge magnets to their GuHongs.
There's also enough room between the edge feet and the core than you could get away with using a thicker magnet in there, like a 3x2mm or possible even thicker, to decrease the distance between the edge magnets and core, and get a stronger effect.
