Electromagnet capable of large air gap distance pulls?
This requires a sketch, but here goes. I would wind my own electromagnets you can get scrap steel (or possibly pure iron) sheeting fairly cheaply and you can get magnet wire fairly cheaply if you buy it from a local motor rewinder. You need to position the polls such that the field lines between them pass through your debris stream. To do it the way your described above is as follows ( I would probably make it as a rotating drum with rows of parallel pole magnets pressed into the debris with scrapper to remove the cans and such after they are lifted from a debris conveyor) ________________ |--] coil[------- | || |debris stream | || || |---]coil[------ | --------------------------- The idea is to create two electromagnets in series with one pair of N-S poles connected by laminated iron sheets ( the copper wire is wound on the laminate) The laminate should look like a rectangle with a capital H cut out from the middle . And the other pair directly across from one another ( this distance should be shorter than any other path to the laminate). Bias the debris toward the working pole. The current in the coils and the number of windings dictate the available field. In this arrangement, the more loose steel between the open pulls the stronger the pull gets.
