I have a set of little flywheels that have a magnet to break the motion of the system. I have one aluminum and several copper ones all water jet cut roughly to size. The copper and aluminum disks I have are all the same dimensions but bought from three different sources.
Yesterday I machined the Aluminum disc and three of the copper discs to the correct specs on the lathe.


I checked the amount of drag caused by these discs some time ago and found the copper was far more effective than the aluminum. Today I needed to check the operating distance of the magnet so repeated this test on the newly machined parts and was shocked to find the three copper discs provided so little drag it bearly registered. The aluminum and the other copper ones worked very well. The drag the magnet courses on the other copper wheels is considerable so the difference is huge, one copper disc brings the whole system to a halt immediately but with the other discs I machined yesterday I can barely feel any drag at all, at first I was unsure there was any until I spun it up faster then I could just about feel some slight resistance.


I thought the strength of the eddy currents produced was dictated by the conductivity of the metal used so I am now confused as to what happened here. As I said before the copper discs are from three different sources so maybe different coppers. Does anyone know what has gone wrong and if it's the copper which coppers are best for use in this job?