Faraday cages to protect your Thinkpads

[Thinkpaddict]

I didn't come up with anything in a search of the forum.

Recently I've been obsessing that a rogue solar flare will hit us and cause enough disruptions to damage electronic equipment like our beloved Thinkpads.

The one way to protect electronic equipment like this from such an event (or from something like an ElectroMagnetic Pulse, or EMP, attack) is a Faraday cage.

But there is a lot of misinformation out there. Too much contradictory information, contained in web sites maintained by survivalist crazies.

I am confident somebody in the forum has good information about this, surely many of you must have thought about a way to protect your Thinkpad collection, am I right?

I've seen people say that it suffices to wrap a cardboard box with a thin aluminum foil layer without any grounding. Other folks contend a thicker metal layer is needed. Still others claim grounding is indispensable. I'm afraid there is too much noise out there.

[ArtShapiro]

I'm not an electrical engineer, so I'm hesitant to make any definitive statements, but I'd like to make an observation:

My home audio system's CD transport (a Wadia WT3200) has the insides completely surrounded by a copper Faraday cage; even the screws holding that cage together are copper. Now that had to cost a pretty penny. So I have to raise the question: why would "they" use copper if some sort of much-cheaper alternative such as aluminum was appropriate and effective? It's not like this is a visible feature - how many folks ever pull the skins off equipment? - so presumably it was done for solid engineering reasons.

Perhaps this will spur some additional commentary on your inquiry.

Art

[rkawakami]

Copper is the best, cheapest conductor of electricity. Silver conducts better but is more expensive per pound.

ref: http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/ ... rical.html (4 best: silver, copper, gold, aluminum)

As to whether or not it's useful / necessary to have the Faraday shield grounded, I would think that the best protection is with the shield grounded. Electrical design, when dealing with interference with signal lines that are sensitive to "noise" (RF, EMP, etc.), will impose grounds between them. That's the premise with ribbon cables. Every other wire across the width of the cable is ground. Same with coax; the center conductor is shielded by a jacket that's grounded.

If you want to protect your Thinkpad collection from whatever the survivalist crazies thinks will happen, then I suppose the cheapest solution would be to get some large printed circuit board panels (they're copper, can be had in double-sided and are about 18" x 24") and solder them together into a cube. I'll leave it up to you to figure out if you want just a 5-sided box that you put over your electronics (atop a metal table that's also grounded) or an actual 6-sided box with a lid (bolted on with copper hinges to maintain the electrical conductivity).

Note: All of the previous statements about the efficacy of grounded Faraday cages is my opinion. If it comes to pass that you actually construct said cage and properly ground it and your equipment is still damaged by a solar flare, nuclear detonation, etc., I cannot be held responsible. Mostly because I will probably not be around...

[Thinkpaddict]

Thank you for your input, gentlemen.

Ray, first of, your disclaimer at the bottom is good stuff!

Yes, it seems that grounding would seem to provide more protection, or at the worst, it probably wouldn't hurt. The idea about soldering a few printed circuit boards is quite interesting, although Im afraid it might not be practical enough. Let me see... how many Thinkpads do I have?

Some of the survivalist nuts claim that the most cost efficient Faraday cage is a large metal garbage can (large metal garbage cans can be had in Amazon for around $40). I suppose you can fit quite a few Thinkpads in one of those, although I would find it disturbing and disrespectful to deposit a working Thinkpad in a garbage can, even if it's in order to protect it.

I was looking online (mostly YouTube) for videos of EMP experiments, and I didn't come up with much, which is weird. I recall seeing something on TV where an experiment was being conducted on a junk yard with a very potent pulse machine, but now I can't find anything about it. if only I were a survivalist crazy I am sure I could come up with some conspiracy theory to explain that fact.

[BillMorrow]

for a decent faraday cage try copper window screen material..
let me know how it works out..

and i am NOT mocking..

if such a thing were to be weaponized (EMP generator or the like) it'll probably be the chinese or russians who do it..
meanwhile the iranians will just lob a bomb into orbit and take out anyone they can..
israel and themselves probably if not us too..

so talk of a faraday cage is not out of order, IMO..

and IF there were an EMP or CME event i think thinkpads will be the LAST of our worries..
water and food and then weapons to protect the first two will be mush more important..

now if you WANT to save your thinkpad (or other small electronic devices) try a big firesafe and make sure the door and box are both grounded..

[JeffCullen]

I'm not an electrical engineer, so I'm hesitant to make any definitive statements, but I'd like to make an observation:

My home audio system's CD transport (a Wadia WT3200) has the insides completely surrounded by a copper Faraday cage; even the screws holding that cage together are copper. Now that had to cost a pretty penny. So I have to raise the question: why would "they" use copper if some sort of much-cheaper alternative such as aluminum was appropriate and effective? It's not like this is a visible feature - how many folks ever pull the skins off equipment? - so presumably it was done for solid engineering reasons.

Perhaps this will spur some additional commentary on your inquiry.

Art

That's an excellent transport. There are actually two copper shields inside, one over the power supply board and the other over the digital board. The goal is to protect the integrity of the fragile clock signal from RF coming off the power supply or CD transport mechanism itself. Different CD transports sound different because of the amount and "quality" of clock jitter coming out of them, something which nearly cost me my sanity several years back before I went into computer audio which sounds much more consistent IMO...

[Thinkpaddict]

for a decent faraday cage try copper window screen material..
let me know how it works out..

and i am NOT mocking..

if such a thing were to be weaponized (EMP generator or the like) it'll probably be the chinese or russians who do it..
meanwhile the iranians will just lob a bomb into orbit and take out anyone they can..
israel and themselves probably if not us too..

so talk of a faraday cage is not out of order, IMO..

and IF there were an EMP or CME event i think thinkpads will be the LAST of our worries..
water and food and then weapons to protect the first two will be mush more important..

now if you WANT to save your thinkpad (or other small electronic devices) try a big firesafe and make sure the door and box are both grounded..

Sorry for taking so long to respond, Bill. You do indeed put things in perspective however. Probably weapons (and a nice garden to grow food) might be a more practical goal if an EMP really goes off.

I thought about the firesafe alternative as well.

They do sell nowadays (I saw them in Amazon) laptop sized bags for EMP/solar flare protection. They claim they exceed military specifications by a factor of 10. Then again, who knows if they would be effective against an actual EMP. They are rather pricey (around $15-$25 depending on size). But I suppose they are worth it if they actually work.