Magniwork Perpetual Motion Scam!

Perpetual Motion Impossible

***Update -7/27/09 - I've confirmed with my own eyes that Magniwork is a SCAM! One of the readers was kind enough to share the Magniwork plans with me and they are laughable. The whole "document" is 57 pages long and looks like something a kid in high school put together. The final "generator" is basically a magnet that is 2" high sitting on a turntable that is 4" high! They claim that its output is 24.5 Watts! That is 1/100th of what my house uses when the AC is on. That is nothing! Basically the plans tell you how to make a mini-electrical generator, but they dont even tell you how you are supposed to turn the thing to produce energy! The thing is about the size of your palm, so even if you did find a "free" way to rotate the shaft, it wouldnt put out enough power to light up a standard light bulb. It's completely ridiculous. Please don't even attpempt to build this thing, just look at the plans if you want a good laugh. Here is some text in regards to how the Magniwork is supposed to be powered:

This power source is not predicated on a continuous flow of energy but predicated on the consistency of the transmutation process of the magnetic molecular structures within the Earth's pressure flow.

What does that even mean? By reading the text it doesn't look like it was a native English speaker who wrote the thing. I bet the author has some money they need to wire to you from a Nigerian bank account.

Whatever you do, don't waste your money on this!

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***Update #2 - 7/30/09 - See the Magniwork plans online for free at this site: Magniwork stole the plans from here. Thanks to Ajax Chen for finding the link. While the site is not the exact version of the plans, it looks like the Magniwork authors just copy and pasted (without even bothering to change the images at all) from the site. From now on, don't even bother to ask for a copy of the plans in the comment section, just see the above link!

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***Update #3 - 8/5/09

Since I'm still getting comments from people saying that they will try to build the generator if they see the plans, I realize I just have to post some pictures of the plans. Once you see the ridiculousness of the "machine" there is no way anyone would try and build it. It's like if I told you I knew of a ground breaking way to cool your home for free, then gave you plans to build a standard refrigerator. Would you still try and build a standard fridge? Pictures coming tonight!

Well, here's the picture I promised. The picture below is taken from this site, which Magniwork stole the plans from.

The amazing Magniwork Generator!

I don't know if you can see, but the device will put out an amazing 24.5 Watts. Maybe enough to charge your phone! All you need is a few thousand of these and maybe you can power your house. But wait, what's going to spin them? Who knows.

Also, the only equipment they talk about is a Multimeter and a Soldering Iron. Ha! The only reason I'm not posting the plans is because I'm sure these scam artists would threaten me with a lawsuit and waste my time.

I am really bothered at how many sites there are when you Google "magniwork" claiming it is for real. This just means that these are also scam sites that get a commission for selling the fake plans. Don't trust these sites!

***Update #4 - 8/7/09

It's amazing (and infuriating) how many scam sites come up when you Google "magniwork". They have been able to weasel their way into a high google ranking. The one site with a high ranking that is not a scam is this great article on PESWiki regarding Magniwork. If you don't take my word for it, read their review.

***Update #5 - 8/18/09

Magniwork has been my most popular post by far. There were 210 people who found this post through Google just yesterday, so these scam artists have made their mark on the web. Based on a recent comment, I want to make one thing clear: I am not calling out this scam because it violates laws of physics (which it does). I am calling out this scam because I have seen where they stole the information and read through their laughable instructions that look like they were written by a 10 year old. Even if the generator actually worked, they completely fail to show how it can power anything bigger than a light bulb, much less your home! This was put together by someone who wanted to take advantage of people trying to save energy. I'm sorry if you've been suckered into this. If you really want to save energy at home, spend $15 and buy The Home Energy Diet: How to Save Money by Making Your House Energy-Smart (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series). It is the most comprehensive analysis of conserving home energy, and it is not a scam! All I can say is follow Mapawatt Blog and hopefully you'll prevent yourself from falling into these scams in the future!

***Update #6 - 8/22/09

I've dedicated a whole post to Magniwork and other Renewable Energy scams . One thing it points out is that Magniwork and Ambigrid are the same thing. It also raises the question, Are Magniwork and Earth4Energy related?

***Update #7 - 9/13/09

Thanks to everyone's help, it looks like our exposure of Magniwork has got them squirming. Seems like they've changed their tune a little bit and are hawking Magniwork with a new name called Magnets4Energy. No, I am not going to link to them, but you can do a Google search for yourself to see how these scammers operate.

***Update #8 - 10/20/09

The guys at off-grid.net have done a great story on the scammers behind Magniwork and a great review of the Magniwork Scam and how it works.

***Update #9 - 01/24/10

I found this great history of perpetual motion machines. Guess what, none of them worked. Reminded me of Magniwork.

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Original Post

I recently added some Google Ads to the site (yes, I am a capitalist) and I ran across this add for a company called Magniwork showing up on my sidebar. They were advertising "free energy" so of course it caught my eye. On their site they say, "How would you like to create a generator which creates free electric energy?" They then show some diagram that is completely useless (and actually includes an diesel generator?) and finally go on to say:

A Zero point magnetic power generator is basically a Free Energy Generator. It uses magnets, and magnetic force to induce perpetual motion. It runs by itself, indefinitely without stopping, thus creating completely free electrical energy, which can fully power your home for free. A Perpetual motion device refers to a machine that runs perpetually i.e. indefinitely, and produces a larger amount of energy than it consumes. Thus, it produces free energy indefinitely, runs by itself, without having to need a third-party device or resource to power it.

Perpetual motion! Woo Hoo! Sounds like a great deal huh? Unfortunately it violates that First Law of Thermodynamics. Physicists and Engineers don't call it the LAW of conservation of energy just to have a clever marketing name.

Why can you never have a perpetual motion machine? Because you will always have friction! Whether it is air friction or friction of a rotating shaft on a bearing, you will always have it! Friction causes things to slow down, so no matter how much energy you start with, friction will slowly eat away at that energy. And this is just a machine that moves forever, not even a machine that has to create electricity with its movement. If you have to create electricity, it requires much more work , so how are you going to overcome natural friction AND create electricity without any losses?

You can have machines that take advantage of wind, solar power, batteries, temperature gradients, etc., but these are not perpetual motion machines. They are just taking energy from one form and converting it to another. You can't create anything from nothing!

The website isn't even selling a machine, but just plans for a machine. Obviously that is a smart idea for an energy scam artist. They can always claim that you just hooked it up wrong. And they claim that the reason you haven't heard of this wonderful device yet is because corporations are suppressing the information. Let me promise you this: If a perpetual motion machine existed that created electricity, it would make a corporation the richest corporation in the world. That's a fact. Corporations would love to sell a machine that created free electricity!

They also have several customer testimonials on the site. As I covered in my article on the Power Factor scam device, never trust customer testimonials on a website. Do you know how easy it is to make one up. Here, let me show you:

John McGillicutty from Kalamazoo, Michigan says, "MapAWatt Blog is the greatest blog in the whole entire world. If you aren't reading this blog you are crazy. Mapawatt has saved me millions in energy bills. Millions I tell you!"

See, I just made that up, but I bet you thought it was real because there was a name and a city attached to the quote. Don't believe customer testimonials on websites that sound like a scam! The website states, "Hundreds of successful magniwork generators have been built around the world, which is a proof that this technology really works!". This means there are many fools that took the bait, not that it works (Thanks Randy for providing this last insight.)

If you are some sucker that got pulled in to trying to sell one of these devices or if you actually bought this, I'm sorry. If you are going to try to argue that it really does work, show me this device hooked up to an energy meter like the TED or any other energy meter. Then prove to me it isn't hooked up to any external power/battery sources. If you can prove that it works, congratulations, you just won the Nobel Prize......

Until then, I'm calling B.S.!

Click here to learn why perpetual motion free energy machines don't work. Make any comments regarding perpetual motion on the post in the link. You can make Magniwork scam comments below.

***Update - 11/03/09 - One of the Mapawatt team members sent me the Mythbuster's Free Energy segment. Guess what? They busted the Free Energy myth!

If you're really interested in creating energy in your home, the best way to do that is install a solar pv system. Click here if you want to get a free quote on a Solar PV system.

Tags:

conservation of energy

first law of thermodynamics

free energy

free energy generator

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Comments

Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/16/2011 - 07:09

While you can't overcome the laws of physics with this device there would be a very low power way to drive a generator using electromagnets and permanent magnets by taking advantage of the repulsion of the "north vs. south" poles of magnets. Imagine a rotor with a several large electromagnets on it. Then you would have an outer ring with permanent magnets on it. Each of the electromagnets are wired through their own respective power relays or even solid state relays. You would then have a microprocessor (microamps to milliamps of current draw) with the outputs attached to driver transistors (maybe two stage transistor drivers) which in turn would power the relay. I don't know how much current is necessary to turn on a power relay because I've been retired from engineering for a while and haven't keep up with the last 15 years of technology. Along the outer ring you would have small sensors, either magnetic or other types. This is where timing, like in a car, comes into play. It would take some playing but based on the RPMs of the rotor and the sensor hits, it would be possible for the processor to automatically calculate when a permanent magnet will align slightly ahead of the electromagnet. With proper programming, the processor can predict that alignment and when the permanent magnet and the electromagnet crosses paths the processor would then turn on the relay (milliseconds)and create a reverse polarity current flow to repel the permanent magnet. Once the alignment and current is reached, the processor shuts off the relay(s) and allows the law of magnetic repulsion kick it and push the rotor so that the next sensor detects the position of the rotor and prepares to fire the next electromagnet (or more) at the same time. To increase the torque of the rotor, you would need to use as many sensors, permanent mags and electro mags as needed and maybe scale up the rotor assembly. Since the processor is so fast, the current draw through the relays is only for a few milliseconds just long enough to "pulse" the electromagnet to create the repulsion and then turn it off. A good low power processor will minimize that part of the power draw and the the "on" current of the relays would be minimized to a small fraction of a second. This is called "low duty cycle". Overall, I think the power used to operate the device would cause it to drive a generator with a low duty cycle which translates to lower drive power. So it would create more electricity that it takes to operate it. Just my idea as I have designed processor circuits with 8 bit processors at 12 Mhz which could perform 100s of thousands of operations a second. That's plenty fast to do this but only 256 outputs by way of a demultiplexor that would convert 8 bits into 256 combinations of outputs. It may take a 16 bit processor to do a better job, especially at higher speed. The key to all this would be the algorithm to dynamically calculate the distance from each sensor to the next electromagnet. Pulsing takes much less power than a constant on DC or AC current to drive the magnets. I really believe this could produce more is than is needed to drive the rotor. A power gain would be desirable. It would take months to develop the circuitry and the micro code algorithm and lots of engineer play time. I think it could be done in time.

Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/29/2011 - 14:39

Robert, it has been done, sort of. It's called "cycloconverter", check at ABB: they sell really big ones to power ships and industrial machinery. The "small sensors" actually are a combination of absolute and differential encoders along with current sensing loops in the windings. Only, it is NOT a generator: it is a motor. No matter how much effort you put in the electronic, you are still stuck with the Gauss theorem, which has not changed much in the past 15 (or 15 billion) years.

ckmapawatt Thu, 06/16/2011 - 11:46

Robert, I think this has been the dream of countless tinkerers through history. If it were possible, don't you think some university would have done it by now?

Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 03/05/2011 - 17:04

Ummm... I think you misspoke about not getting out what you put in, there is a zero sum gain/loss where this is concerned. Accordingly there is no loss or gain simply transfer. The energy exists in one form or another, i.e. nothing is gained or lost simply converted.

Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/15/2011 - 20:37

Hi. Could you send me plans about capagen generator. I would build this on farm. I take some plans from jaudin.fr webside but it doesn't work. Can you help me?

ckmapawatt Sat, 03/05/2011 - 18:47

Ummm....I think you are confused. Whenever there is energy transfer there is going to be loss due to friction (heat).

Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/14/2011 - 19:04

Telsa did want to use power from the earth to give it to everyone free, but I think the issue with that would have been how much does the earth have/generate and if it was used what would be the effects on the earth itself? Does the earth recharge via the sun somehow? Lots to look into around this, but still convinced that more electricity is the answer to humanities problems. Making better use of less would be great, spread the wealth of energy to everyone. Consumption must be cut in order to make things work, not find another source that could potentially have issues in the future. When whale oil was the bees knees, no one thought about the issue of over harvesting. Petroleum came along, but now there are issues with that. So, a new source might seem better, but long term what happens? Less is more.

Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 06/11/2011 - 23:17

Thanks Guys, I have been waiting for some feedback on this and I already have it up on my website but it will be down within the hour. I don't like to promote rubbish, scams and stuff, so I wonder how much of the other stuff I promoted from these market websites is crap too. I will see if I can research more of these.

Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 03/12/2011 - 18:34

Friend of mine got scammed on this too; "easy to build - a novice could do it" ..."satisfaction guaranteed"... One look at their plans and he saw that their claims were ridiculous. Then he wrote to them to get his money back (as guaranteed). Of course, he has not received a reply and there has been ample time. Legitimate and honest companies would at least be expected to respond to their customer's concerns. Liars and thieves -- That's my opinion!

Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/14/2011 - 15:46

There are definitely ways of cutting your power bills in half, guaranteed!! Just send me $10 and I'll send you full instructions and maybe even a pair of scissors. Incidentally, you'll still need to pay the full amount of the dissected power bill ... sorry about that! Now tell me: Have I delivered on the promise? Is this a scam? re Magniwork: The laws of physics still apply even though the word 'gullible' was removed from the dictionary .... was it?

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