Seems like a lot of my screwdrivers and drill bits have become magnetized, and due to there being grinding dust and drilling chips on my bench and in the tool drawers, I end up having a lot of crud sticking to my tools. Usually a quick rap against the vise will knock them off, but it's a pain in the rear to have to constantly do that. Is there any way to demagnetize them? Thanks!
With a demagnetizer. We use them at work to take the magnitzem out of steels before we mount them on the die. If you have any freinds that work at a machine shop they should be abile to help you out. If they have a surfice grinder the should have a demager.
Just so you know that everytime you hit the vise with your tools you are magnetizing them. Its simple physics. Take any steel bar and hit it hard a few times. The molecular structure is slightly changed, allinging the (+) and the (-) creating a magnetic field. No B.S., Try it. It won't be the strongest magnet you have seen, but it will pick up the filings and etc.
rub your tools on the negative side of the magnet.If you take a small electric motor,say from a window regulator, and take the magnets out,usually the concave side will magnatize a screwdriver when you rub it back and forth,and if you do the same on the convex side it will demagnatize,usually.
i know that if you rub a screwdriver front to back on the edge of a speaker magnet it will magnetize it, now rub the screwdiver across the magnet side to side. it will demagnetize it.
Also, if you have one of the old style soldering guns that have a heating element that forms a loop,you can put the tool in the center of the loop,turn on the soldering gun and pull the tool through while its on and that will demagnetize it.
Degausing. You can make your own, but for small items like screwdrivers, the soldering gun trick works well.
throw them at your neighbors cat... wait thats how i deter the cat from coming into my garage. SORRY i don't know
If you don't mind playing with 120V wiring it is fairly easy to make a demagnitzer. Track down a power supply transformer of about 75-100 VA with a 120V primary with an EI core (the metal laminations inside the transfomer). Then cut off one side of the core with a hacksaw to make it a E core (with the windings left on the middle leg of the E). Isolate and tape off the secondary winding ends. The mount in a non-conductive box with the new core poles up (open end of E) and cover them flush with a thin plastic cover (I just put the whole thing into a plastic pox). Add a line cord and a momentary switch (or just flick on/off at the wall) to feed the primary and there you have it. Don't leave it on for more than a few seconds or it will burn out. Put the tool over the poles, switch on, then pull the tool away slowly (over a couple of seconds).
If you happen to have one of those Sonicare tooth brushes, you can use the charger base to demagnetize small tools. Just plug in the charger and place the item inside the cavity of the charger. Withdraw and its demagnetized.
I was under the impression that striking a magnetized object against something would disrupt the molecular structure and demagnetize it. Didn't know it was the other way around.
how do you guess the rear springs/shackles become magentized on a frame i was striping out when i noticed this. i cant ever remember running across this in the 40yrs i have been fooling with cars.
use our demag that we have for aerospace work. looks like a giant transformer that's open in the middle. I always feel like I should be wearing a lead cup around that thing
Welding will magnetize your work and anything in close by. Just so you know to keep away and perhaps prevent the problem.
Any shop with a Magnaflux (tm) bench (Mag Particle for you NDI types) can degauss anything that you might describe as a 'hand tool'. Any shop that does recip aircraft engine overhaul is likely to have one.
Hit it hard enough and it will de-magnetize it. I like the elctric toothbrush one. I'll have to remember that.
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