Making an electromagnet

dorker

I hear a setup like the one in the pic will drain the battery in minutes, and using an AC source will mean an oscillating field and heating. So what other options do I have for a power source if I want a working homemade electromagnet?

Bobbywhy

dorker, the letters "dyi" stand for "do it yourself". If you go to Google search and enter the terms "diy electromagnet" you will find lots of sites with many different examples of how to do what you are asking about.

Nice photograph of your setup!
Let us know how your project goes.

Cheers,
Bobbywhy

zoobyshoe

Am I seeing things, or has the insulation been stripped off this wire?!?!

Bandit127

Stripped or not, it looks like the wire arrangement you might use for an electric bar heater.

The OP should consider why motor and transformer coils have hundreds of turns of thin wire instead of a few of thick.

zoobyshoe

He's not even there yet. If it's stripped the current shorts through the nail and there's no N-S magnetic field around the nail, just the 'pole-less' magnetic field around a current carrying conductor. That will attract ferrous metal, but you can't increase the strength with more turns and the nail becomes moot. If it's stripped, the person doesn't understand the reason for looping the wire in the first place, much less why it's looped around a ferrous metal.