ok well I've had a few different ideas for how to get magnets to spin a rotor over the past years, some are stupid and just don't work, some I've tested, some I haven't...
This ones different and I don't think I've really seen this version anywhere so I'm going to post the femm files for it since I don't know if I'll ever get a chance build and test it being that the Mu-Metal shields would need to be a kind of custom order placed somewhere since Mu-Metal cannot be shaped once it is specially heat treated for permeability.
Now I know we can't shield a magnet from another magnet, but we can shield a non magnetized magnetic material from another magnet using high permeability materials such as Mu-Metal.
I used a lua script I found on the overunity forums to run a torque analysis on the system rotating the rotor and the "stator magnets" in opposite directions at 1 degree increments. It gets positive torque and some negatives, but the average ends up being positive. The design probably needs to be reworked further before being built however to get it to really work right plus the Mu-Metal shielding needs to be a certain thickness and have a magnetic permeability curve that correctly absorbs the magnetic fields on one side of the stator magnets while allowing some field to escape on the non mu-metal shielded side that interacts with the rotor.
The idea uses magnets to interact with a ferromagnetic or in this case cast iron rotor that is designed as a spiral. The magnets attract to the spiral making the rotor spin the outer most part of the spiral closer to the magnets while the magnets rotate in the opposite direction via a gear system connecting the rotor to the "Stator Magnets" which rotate on the outside of the rotor. The magnets have one half side of them "shielded" with Mu-Metal to absorb the magnetic flux on one side of the "stator magnets". The gears would be set so that the magnets rotate at the same RPM as the rotor so that that the Mu-Metal blocks the magnets from sticking to the outer most part of the spiral to continue the magnetically induced rotation on the rotor and help minimize the sticking point.
Idealy a uniform radial ring (or radial disc?) magnet would probably work the best verse the diametrically magnetized magnets I used in the simulation, but femm can't really simulate this type of magnet, and a simulation needs to be run in order to figure out the correct size and permeability needed for the Mu-Metal shields on the stator magnets.
Things that need to be considered are the negative torques that the stator magnets would add back into the rotor also however I think this can be again overcome using gears.
Different sizes designs and materials for the rotor need to be tested still or simulated, along with different sized magnets with different sized Mu-Metal Shields, with the magnets used in this setup it seems like a mu metal shield that is half the diameter in thickness of the magnet itself seems to work the best. The trick is to absorb as much as possible on 1 half side of the magnet while still letting magnetic field escape out the other side of the magnet and interact with the rotor when the magnets are not shielded from the rotor at the "sticking points" as people have come to call those locations in most magnet motor designs.
I hope this can be of help somehow, the Femm files from my most successful simulations with the best torques I've gotten so far are attached along with a magnetic field image of mm5 the one that seemed to work the best, the torque isn't amazing but I still think its something that can be worked with and the design refined for better outputs.
Other thoughts I had were ideas involving similar methods and using a "Murray" Rotor design to possibly get better results but I do not have a 3d magnetic simulation program to test any of those ideas with really.
I just wanted to get people thinking about using Mu-Metal and different magnetic permeability's to further this idea along. While we cannot shield a magnet from another magnet, we can still shield a non magnetized ferromagnetic material from a magnet and then unshield it under its own power to achieve a force.
The energy or power comes from the magnetic field being transferred from the magnet to the ferromagnetic rotor, I realize the rotor would eventually become magnetized over time from interacting with the magnets, so the rotor would eventually need to be replaced with a non magnetized one.
Let me know what you guys think.
EDIT: I can't upload the .femm files here file type isn't supported so heres a link to open-source-energy.org
http://open-source-energy.org/?topic=3250.msg49627#msg49627