Regardless of what a person needs a magnet for, it can be easily made at home. When such a thing is at hand, with its help you can not only have fun, picking up various small pieces of iron from the table, but also find useful uses for it, for example, find a needle dropped on the carpet. From this article you will learn how easy it is to make an electromagnet with your own hands at home.
A bit of physics
As we remember (or don't remember) from physics lessons, in order to convert an electric current into a magnetic field, you need to create induction. The inductance is created using an ordinary coil, inside which this field arises and is transmitted to a steel core, around which the coil is wound.
Thus, depending on the polarity, one end of the core will radiate a field with a minus sign, and the opposite one with a plus sign. But for visualThe magnetic ability of the polarity is in no way affected. So, when the physics is over, you can take decisive action to create the simplest electromagnet with your own hands.
Materials for making the simplest magnet
First of all, we need any inductor with a copper wire wound around the core. It can be an ordinary transformer from any power supply. An excellent tool for creating electromagnets is winding around the narrowed back of the kinescopes of old monitors or televisions. The strands of conductors in transformers are protected by insulation, consisting of an almost invisible layer of special varnish that prevents the passage of electric current, which is exactly what we need. In addition to the indicated conductors, to create an electromagnet with your own hands, you also need to prepare:
- A regular battery for one and a half Volts.
- Scotch tape or duct tape.
- Sharp knife.
- Nail weaving.
The process of making a simple magnet
Start by removing the wires from the transformer. As a rule, its middle is inside the steel frame. It is possible, having removed the surface insulation on the coil, to simply unwind the wire, dragging it between the frames and the coil. Since we do not need a lot of wire, this method is the most acceptable here. When we have released enough wire, we do the following:
- We wind the wire removed from the transformer coil arounda nail that will serve as a steel core for our electromagnet. It is advisable to make the turns as often as possible, pressing them tightly against each other. Do not forget to leave the long end of the wire on the initial turn, through which our electromagnet will be powered to one of the poles of the battery.
- When we reached the opposite end of the nail, we also leave a long conductor for powering. Cut off the excess wire with a knife. To prevent the spiral wound by us from unraveling, you can wrap it with tape or electrical tape.
- We clean both ends of the wire coming from the wound nail from the insulating varnish with a knife.
- We lean one end of the stripped conductor to the plus of the battery and grab it with tape or tape so that the contact is well maintained.
- The other end is attached to the minus in the same way.
The electromagnet is ready to go. By scattering metal paper clips or buttons on the table, you can check its performance.
How to make a stronger magnet?
How to make an electromagnet with more powerful magnetic properties with your own hands? The strength of magnetism is influenced by several factors, and the most important of them is the power of the electric current of the battery that we use. For example, having made an electromagnet from a square battery of 4.5 volts, we will triple the strength of its magnetic properties. A 9-volt crown will give an even more powerful effect.
But do not forget that the stronger the electric current, the moreturns will be required, since the resistance with a small number of turns will be too strong, which will lead to strong heating of the conductors. If they are strongly heated, the insulating varnish may begin to melt, the turns will begin to short on each other or on the steel core. Both will sooner or later lead to a short circuit.
Also, the strength of magnetism depends on the number of turns around the core of the magnet. The more there are, the stronger the induction field will be, and the stronger the magnet will be.
Making a more powerful magnet
Let's try to make a 12 volt electromagnet with our own hands. It will be powered by a 12-volt AC adapter or a 12-volt car battery. To make it, we need a much larger amount of copper conductor, and therefore we should initially remove the internal coil with copper wire from the prepared transformer. Bulgarian is the best way to extract it.
What we need to make:
- Steel horseshoe from a large padlock, which will serve as our core. In this case, it will be possible to magnetize the pieces of iron with both ends, which will further increase the lifting capacity of the magnet.
- Coil with varnished copper wire.
- Insulating tape.
- Knife.
- Unnecessary 12 volt power supply or car battery.
The process of making a powerful 12-volt magnet
Of course, any other massive steel pin can be used as a core. But the horseshoe is from the old castlefits perfectly. Its bend will serve as a kind of handle if we begin to lift loads that have an impressive weight. So, in this case, the process of making an electromagnet with your own hands is as follows:
- We wind the wire from the transformer around one of the horseshoes. We put the coils as tightly as possible. The horseshoe bend will get in the way a bit, but that's okay. When the length of the side of the horseshoe ends, we lay the turns in the opposite direction, on top of the first row of turns. We make a total of 500 turns.
- When the winding of one half of the horseshoe is ready, we wrap it with one layer of electrical tape. The initial end of the wire intended for feeding from a current source is brought to the top of the future handle. We wrap our coil on a horseshoe with another layer of electrical tape. We wind the other end of the conductor to the bending core of the handle and make another coil on the other side.
- Winding the wire on the opposite side of the horseshoe. We do everything in the same way as in the case of the first side. When 500 turns are laid, we also bring out the end of the wire for powering from an energy source. For those who don't understand, the procedure is well shown in this video.
The final stage of making an electromagnet with your own hands is feeding to an energy source. If this is a battery, we build up the ends of the stripped conductors of our electromagnet with the help of additional wires that we connect to the battery terminals. If this is a power supply, cut off the plug that goes to the consumer, strip the wires and fasten to eachwire from the electromagnet. Isolate with tape. We turn on the power supply to the socket. Congratulations. You made a powerful 12 volt electromagnet with your own hands, which is able to lift loads over 5 kg.
