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adapt electro magnet to frontend loader

O

ohjeffoh

Member
I have a chance to buy a very old electro magnet, the kind I used to see hanging from a crane or track hoe in a salvage yard. Their is an old burn pile on my property and if I can hang this off my front end loader it should make cleanup easier and make a little money in the process, I'm not going to sort it by hand for fear of what might be in the burn pile that could be harmful to my health.
The old man that owned it died a couple yrs ago he used it in his locomotive salvage business and his kids are in the mood to scrap everything to clean the place up. problem is no one knows the specs for voltage input, I looked at it today it has no data plate, it has two fairly large wires to power it I would guess 4 ga.
The only Info I can find is from a drunk that used to work for him he said when they used it they put a gas powered generator on the crane to power the magnet but he had no idea how he hooked it to the generator. Since their is so many great minds on here I hope someone can help me.
 
(quoted from post at 15:53:00 01/11/21) I have a chance to buy a very old electro magnet, the kind I used to see hanging from a crane or track hoe in a salvage yard. Their is an old burn pile on my property and if I can hang this off my front end loader it should make cleanup easier and make a little money in the process, I'm not going to sort it by hand for fear of what might be in the burn pile that could be harmful to my health.
The old man that owned it died a couple yrs ago he used it in his locomotive salvage business and his kids are in the mood to scrap everything to clean the place up. problem is no one knows the specs for voltage input, I looked at it today it has no data plate, it has two fairly large wires to power it I would guess 4 ga.
The only Info I can find is from a drunk that used to work for him he said when they used it they put a gas powered generator on the crane to power the magnet but he had no idea how he hooked it to the generator. Since their is so many great minds on here I hope someone can help me.
Click to expand...


That is a neat idea. I guess A/C versus D/C too. Perhaps if you get it for scrap price you can experiment with it. Electromagnets were coils of wire, so other than the wire shouldn't be much to mess up.
 
check with your locale scrap yard they should know because they use them every day if you can find the right person
 
Good evening: I noticed the topic, it made me think that a welder of some type might furnish enough power for a useful electromagnet. Just me thinking...

Dennis M. in W. Tenn.
 
IM sure it will require DC. AC will create a magnetic field but since it is alternating it will pull on half the cycle and push on the other half cycle. For a net of zero grabbing power. In
fact back in the days of color TV picture tubes, we would use AC to demagnetize the screen.
 
Any wattage you put to it will make a magnet. One thing you will have to deal with
is when you break the circuit, the collapse of the field will burn the contacts.
 
I know about as much about those magnets as I know how to crochet. Meaning not much. The local salvage yard I take scrap to has a track hoe with a four jaw claw for picking up the big stuff. When they want to pick up small steel they pick a magnet up with a chain in the middle of the claw and plug in the magnet. Last time I was there a guy was wiring a new plug on the magnet end of the cord while the track hoe claw was swing around him picking up steel. He didn't seem one bit alarmed about potentially being wiped off the map. Anyway the cord he was handling was big and it looked like a four wire plug that was bigger than fifty amps. When he got the plug wired the claw swung over his head and dropped down and he hooked up the chain to the claw. He plugged in the magnet, draped the cord up on something, gave the plug a twist to lock it and just as he was turning away a big white flash of electricity came out of the plug. The man didn't even flinch, he just got out of the way and the track hoe went to work picking up steel with the magnet. That white ball of fire told me there was some serious juice going through that plug. Going on what I saw there I have a hunch you will need some serious generating capacity to run one up to capacity.
 
Never been around one, but it will take quite a power supply to run it.

Found this, I can't find any specs on the input, suspect it is DC in.

I have seen a belt driven generator on the cranes at the scrap yard but only from a distance. Looking at the numbers, such a generator will be expensive and require some HP to drive it!
Controller
 
(quoted from post at 20:17:29 01/11/21) I know about as much about those magnets as I know how to crochet. Meaning not much. The local salvage yard I take scrap to has a track hoe with a four jaw claw for picking up the big stuff. When they want to pick up small steel they pick a magnet up with a chain in the middle of the claw and plug in the magnet. Last time I was there a guy was wiring a new plug on the magnet end of the cord while the track hoe claw was swing around him picking up steel. He didn't seem one bit alarmed about potentially being wiped off the map. Anyway the cord he was handling was big and it looked like a four wire plug that was bigger than fifty amps. When he got the plug wired the claw swung over his head and dropped down and he hooked up the chain to the claw. He plugged in the magnet, draped the cord up on something, gave the plug a twist to lock it and just as he was turning away a big white flash of electricity came out of the plug. The man didn't even flinch, he just got out of the way and the track hoe went to work picking up steel with the magnet. That white ball of fire told me there was some serious juice going through that plug. Going on what I saw there I have a hunch you will need some serious generating capacity to run one up to capacity.
Click to expand...

"That white ball of fire told me there was some serious juice going through that plug."

Upper, you might want to read up on "collapse of a magnetic field" or "inductance".

While you are no doubt correct that it takes some serious Amps to energize an electromagnet of that size on the other had when you interrupt that circuit and the magnetic field collapses it can result in some serious fireworks at the plug!
 
I know nothing, but this place sells 12/24 volt and 230 volt magnets. Maybe you can figure out something from their specs.

Paul
Gensco mag
 
I'd worry more about the weight of the magnet on the front. You will be severely limited on how much you will be able to pick up with a magnet on the loader. Also they vary the amount of juice to the magnet, for the amount they want to lift with it. Not sure how much juice they have. But it does vary for the holding the piece they are lifting. heavier takes more juice. You could try it out with a line from your battery. It might be all you can lift with just that much juice to it. If it needs more you could then turn a generator off the PTO for counter balance on the tractor. One of those PTO powered generators would probably give you all the juice you would need.
 
(quoted from post at 20:43:14 01/11/21) IM sure it will require DC. AC will create a magnetic field but since it is alternating it will pull on half the cycle and push on the other half cycle. For a net of zero grabbing power. In
fact back in the days of color TV picture tubes, we would use AC to demagnetize the screen.
Click to expand...
believe you would be right if what you were lifting was magnetic, but if lifting plain chunks of steel they won't care about the polarity, and will be attracted by both cycles. DC will be more efficient and lift heavier loads because it does not have the part of the AC cycle that is null. Besides the theory part, I have played around with electro magnets, both commercial ones and ones I wound myself. They worked on AC. That was many years ago, and at that time I did not have a DC supplye to power them. I was fairly young and never thought of connecting to a tractor battery.
 


Any electrical contactor is operated by a coil, and many other things are operated by electrical coils which are electromagnets and they seem to work OK with AC. AC alternates pretty fast so we are unaware of the back and forth like light bulbs seem to stay bright too.
 
Well, you should be able to figure it out. The 4 gauge wires give you an idea of the maximum current; probably close to 100 amps. If you can measure the magnet's resistance, that will tell you how much voltage you need. The resistance is going to be pretty low. If it needs 240 volts, the resistance will be about 24 ohms. If it's 120, then the resistance would be around 12 ohms. A 24 volt magnet would be 2.4 ohms and 12 volt would be 1.2 ohms.
 
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