Magnetic Card Questions

[Sukiari]

(12-06-2020 03:42 AM)Kostas Kritsilas Wrote:  

(12-06-2020 01:53 AM)Sukiari Wrote:  Has anybody explored the possibility of using commonly available magnetic strip on cardboard as a replacement? You can get it in several formulations and it's dirt cheap. There are a finite number of cards and they seem to get more rare and expensive over time.

I wonder how hard it would be to "make" new cards. I think the basic shape is easy to duplicate (just use any of the existing cards as a template), and probably getting the thickness right wouldn't be too hard. What might take some (or a lot of) effort is getting the magnetic material/oxide coating right, in terms of magnetic characteristics and abrasiveness. There are magnetic strips on the back of most bank cards, at least up here in Canada, so getting a magnetic strip onto a plastic substrate is not something that has disappeared as a process. Another approach might be to see the companies that make business card type fridge magnets, maybe they can be pursuaded to make a non magnetic version on a thinner substrate?

Before worrying about the formulation I will probably just try making a template and trying various magnetic strip materials I have lying around. I used to punch holes in DD 3 1/2" floppies so I could format them as high density instead of double when I was a lad and I have quite a few of these disks still, they all work fine - haha! So I think the material's probably not terribly important especially considering the low data density on the card itself.