Hi, all! After doing a lot of basing this year, and inspired by this thread, I'm really curious about what everyone else thinks about basing. In...possibly unreasonable detail. So I put together a Google Forms poll with a few questions about bases. If you have a minute, could you fill it out? I'll share the results once enough responses are in. (This survey is also posted to the WGC Infinity group on Facebook, if you see it both places please just fill it out once, thanks!) https://forms.gle/LQwY5bZZkCGQZHJy7 (EDIT: This is mostly just to satisfy my own curiosity, but the info might be useful in general, and I'm a designer by trade so I may try to do something constructive with the results, depending. Either way, thanks for your time!)
I you designed LoF markers that actually worked, clipped on (or stuck with magnets but didn't need the magnets to be aligned with CB magnet holes), and came in reasonable colours (say black and grey, to denote two combat groups), I would be your first customer. Bonus points if you could also use them to mark unit info, e.g. this Regular is a forward observer, this one is the Datatracker. But you have to act fast because I'm going to try to design some myself once the local library reopens and I have access to their 3d printer again.
I actually made a snap-on set of markers for Datatracker, Liaison Officer, and Data Pack that were printed card pieces stuck on a 1” metal disc; they could be modified to show the back of the LoF arc very easily—the default is to show the front, but since it’s just a 180° arc showing one also indicates the other. My original thought was to make each of them cover 90° of the back arc so you could snap on any two status markers without overlapping the front 180° arc. They work fine flat, so no need for 3d printing. I’m chronically overworked—if you wait on me it might be a long wait. But if I do come up with anything, I’ll post here. I don’t really plan on starting a side business, I’m more likely to post free ready to use files instead.
I ordered them from Amazon; I had to try several kinds before finding some that were actually the right kind of steel for magnets to stick to. The various steel "blanks" for hobby stamping (think dog tags) are the wrong, softer kind of steel and magnets don't stick to them. The ones I found were blank steel "strike plates" used in cabinets and projects specifically for magnets to stick to in a magnetized cabinet door situation. The ones I ordered were 1" and they don't seem to carry those anymore, but the other sizes will likely also work and they're all 1mm thick so they add minimal height even when you stack a couple under a base. Here's the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/totalElement-Steel-Discs-Strike-Plates/dp/B081J83ZSN
You need a certain amount of material cross section for magnets to do their thing. How thick depends on the physical dimensions of your magnet, but its something you will run into if your goal is 'as thin as possible'
This is true of magnets—the bigger a magnet is, the more strongly it attracts—but less so for things that are attracted to them...like iron filings. The main thing about different steels is that different grades of stainless steel are made of different mixtures of metals and using different manufacturing techniques, and some of them don't have the right crystalline structure for magnets to stick to them right from the factory. Here's a good rundown, but the simplest take-away is that the most common 300-grade stainless (304 and 316) steels are generally not suitable for magnetic applications unless you're working them in some way that deforms them enough for their structure to switch from austenitic to ferritic; for our purposes, that means you want to look for 400-grade stainless if you're buying steel that you want magnets to stick to. IIRC the discs I linked to on Amazon are grade 409 stainless steel, but I might be mistaken. They're definitely suitable for magnet-compatible projects, though. I have a bunch and can confirm they work so reliably that I've glued some onto the ends of empty pill bottles to use as painting handles for my models on magnetized bases, with a little putty to minimize spinning.
These strike plates are perfect! Thanks for the tip @wes-o-matic . Here is a Barid with a LoF arc stuck on via magnets. The arc can be turned to get his gun and arm out of the way so that he can be flush against a wall, and the colour of the arc denotes combat group. The Unloaded token is also made from a strike plate and stays attached when he's moved around the table. I glued a strike plate to a cork to make a paint stand for doing touchups to models after they've been based, and I glued one to my turntable to hold models in place for 3D scanning for TTS. These strike plates are 175-years-in-the-future technology!
