DIY Electromagnetic welding table upgrade

Hi folks welcome to Man Cave Makings with me Gus,

In this video I’ll take you through how I turned a door mag lock into this welding table insert pad so I can get a magnetised third had holdy down thingy in my welding bench, all at the flick of a switch!

The idea for this came from a live stream I did on Instagram where I did a hour build challenge live. It was an awesome experience but there were a few instances of small metal parts needing shaped and moulded with the grinder and one or two of them might have been punted over the workshop a great pace as I could hold them at the same time as using the grinder.

As I would have expected a few comments of “Gus your gonna loose a finger”, and “you should put that in a vice”, we’re all very valid but in most cases I can’t use a vice so this set my mind into overdrive.

A few days later I was sat in my office at work and as with most modern workplaces there is a security door entry system where you tap your pass on a pad on the wall to release the door. Our doors have these bloody big magnetic pads bolted to the top of the door and I had the eureka moment…………I wonder how much holding force one of those things has?????

As it turns out, quite a lot! I jumped onto Google and did some research and found a brand new 24v electromagnetic door lock on eBay for £15 and what was more surprising is that it said it has 750Kg of holding force. At that point I thought even if this doesn’t work for such a small outlay this is definitely worth trying.

All I needed to do was make the aperture in one of the slats of the welding bench to receive the thinner gauge plate. The reason for doing this is the magnet would not be strong enough to energise through 12mm steel and then have any magnetism left to hold a part or anything else. I went with a 3mm plate section to maintain some level of rigidity and wear capability but being thin enough for the magnet to do its thing.

As you will see in the video I’m delighted with how this new pad will improve safety in my shop and protect my digests form the angry end of the grinder but also it has kicked off a load more possibilities in my head which is what I love!

I hope you have maybe taken some good information from the video and as always I love to hear from you so please do leave me a comment and if you liked the video consider giving a thumbs up or subscribing which would be awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to watch my content and as always I hope to catch you again.

Door mag lock – I’ve not put a link to this as eBay links tend to be short lived and you will have to research what you can get online but if you search under Door Mag Lock, or Door entry magnetic locks, or mag lock for door access systems you will find them easily. They are very common and as you will see very cheap to buy! Good luck guys

Power supply – I used a 240v to 24v 1A power supply which I got from Amazon and a simple double pole in line switch with some 2 core 0.75mm cable to tie it all together.

Materials
3mm plate steel
20x20x3mm angle
6mm screwed rod with nuts

Welding machine
R Tech TIG160PDC
R Tech FT-47K-CL Foot pedal
CK tig torch – CK9FX (4M no sheath)
Furick FUPA12 Ceramic cup with 2% Thoriated Tungstens (2.4mm)

Music is from epidemic sound
You can find me also @mancavemakings on Instagram