Steel printing side effect?

[ewige]

So, the plan is to make my basement into my imagining of the Dharma Initiative Compass Station from the Lost universe. The Compass station is situated near a much smaller pocket of energy, which was used in conjunction with data from the Darkside and Lamppost stations to first discern the location of the island.

At any rate, I drafted up a failsafe key for the compass station and had it printed out at Shapeways in steel. After receiving it in the mail, I was doing a little cleanup with a safety pin (the printing process involves some sand-like material, some of which got lodged in the subtle details of the key head), when I lightly pricked myself. I dropped the pin and discovered something about the key that I hadn't anticipated:



The head of the key is lightly ferromagnetic.

Now this of course fits in terrifically with my backstory for the key being kept in the station near the big pocket of EM energy, but it was completely unexpected. Has anyone else run into this? Is it a known side effect of the steel sprinting process?

Just wanted to share.

 

[TheSt.LouisKid]

I have not found that to be the case with my stainless steel Gizmonic Pin from Shapeways.

 

[ewige]

It's definitely the key and not the safety pin, as I confirmed it with a paperclip as well.

That GI pin is pretty terrific.

 

[dropshipbob]

I would imagine there is some heat involved in the process of making your key, which in turn would eliminate any magnetic properties the metal may have had.

This may have been something that happened to it after it was created, maybe it was placed next too a high powered magnet and some of it transfered to your key?

 

[Ronz]

Hmm, I could be way off but I think that the friction created when the metal is blasted with the sand particles could be creating a small amount of static which could have partially realigned the atoms of the steel... or something...

 

[modeljag]

Many coldworking operations can induce magnetism in different steels.