Programmable magnets vs. conventional magnets: read the force curves

The difference between a conventional magnet and a programmable one isn't strength — it's control. A conventional magnet has exactly one trick, and one force curve. A programmable magnet lets you draw the curve you want.

What a conventional magnet can do

A standard magnet has North on one face and South on the other. Bring two together and you get a single, monotonic behavior: attraction (or repulsion) that simply grows as the gap closes. Useful — but it's the only curve you get, and it reaches out far, grabbing anything ferrous nearby.

What changes with a coded face

A programmable magnet (a "Polymagnet," also called a correlated, coded, or software-defined magnet) prints many small poles — maxels — on one face in an engineered pattern. When two coded faces meet, their fields add where the codes align and cancel where they don't. Now the force is a function of both position and rotation, so you can shape it:

• Attract (conventional) — one smooth pull.
• Spring — attracts at a distance, repels below a set gap: non-contact springiness.
• Twist-release — peak hold at 0°, force collapses at ~20° rotation.
• Detent — a periodic curve that clicks into positions.
• Align — force peaks only at the correct seated position and orientation.

Same magnet material. The behavior lives in the pattern, not the part.

Stronger up close — and shorter reach on purpose

Because the North and South maxels sit next to each other, the flux takes short loops right at the surface instead of arcing out to a far pole. Two consequences matter for design:

• Higher near-field strength — on sheet metal, holding force can reach up to about 4x a conventional magnet of the same size (design- and test-dependent).
• Short reach — the field is near-zero beyond about a quarter inch. That's a feature: far less stray field to disturb a compass, wireless charging, a credit card, or nearby electronics.

When to use which

Reach for a conventional magnet when you just need to hold two things together and cost per part is everything. Reach for a programmable magnet when you need behavior — self-alignment, a latch, a spring, a twist-release, a detent — or when a conventional magnet's long stray field would be a problem. In many designs one programmable part replaces three or four conventional components.