99 cent score at Value Village

I have several of these. Some were purchased when I had an open-reel tape recorder, and they're still usable on cassette audio tapes and the higher-powered one even works for video tapes. Mostly these days I use them to demagnetize things: screwdrivers, wrenches, and even a CRT shadow mask when someone left a powerful magnet sitting on top of it.

But I never thought of using them to pick up chips. Thanks for the idea. Too bad it doesn't work on brass or aluminum.

I found one for $2.00 at a consignment store, a Radio Shack model. I walked past it on several occasions, saying "you don't need yet another demagnetizer". But eventually I couldn't resist the price, and bought it. Now it sits in my home office, so I can demagnetize things without walking all the way down to the basement (one floor below) where the main shop is. At least, I'll use it for that once I find something in the office that needs demagnetizing. :-)

I got one of the high-power ones for not much more from a garage sale.

Dave

Bill

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Just don't leave it on too long. The duty cycle on these things is pretty low. They handed one to a student aide out in the storage cage one time so he could wipe floppies before they were scrapped(had a huge crate of them), nobody thought to tell him, "1 minute on, 10 minutes off", like the instructions in the box said. So he was busy beavering away out there until the plastic case slagged about a 1/4 hour later. After that, we got a government-approved, genuwine security magnet paddle to do that job, about $300. Probably had less juice than some of the hard drive magnets these days, but had the official sticker for wiping sensitive info.

A magnetron magnet out of a dud microwave works pretty well for chip pickup, I use newspaper bags to drop them into, but bread sacks would work, too. Each magnetron has two. You don't need a power cord, either. When you get a full load of chips, turn the bag inside out, detach magnet and your swarf is packaged and ready to go.

Stan

Since I didn't have a bulk eraser when I decided to scrap all of my old 5-1/4 disks, I did the next best thing by running them thru a bandsaw. Took me about 15-20 minutes to cut up several hundred disks.

I use two magnetron magnets - B52 or B47 grade - don't recall - :-) - one in each hand to pluck out cut 1/2" pigs... from a sheet of armor plate on my table. Sometimes it takes wiggling a bit - the pig was just cut and hot!

Nice to have to grab 'hooks' that then snap sideways off on the finishing table..

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH & Endowment Member NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member

snipped-for-privacy@prolynx.com wrote:

If you want one of the seriously high-power ones, get those rack-mount ones designed for instrumentation tape on 10-1/2" reels. You'll find a pair of square "U" electromagnets facing each other from opposite sides of the tape, and in series with them an oil-filled capacitor designed to produce a near resonant circuit at 60 Hz, so you get a lot more current through the coils than you would just hooking them across the AC line.

You'll also find a motor rotating the hub for the tapes on a traveling carriage, which will slowly back the tape out as it is rotated between the pole pieces, eventually pulling far enough away so the power can be (automatically) switched off.

These can do an excellent job of degaussing a 1" or even 2" thick reel of tape -- and they really make the light aluminum reel flanges sing when in operation. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Got one at work. Trouble is, it wasn't any good for the AIT tapes that I needed to dispose of, so I got them shredded, all 2500 of them :-)

Mark Rand RTFM