Electromagnet

This is an attempt at a printable/castable electromagnet. The coil is made from plastic castings and low-melt alloy. There is one base-disk and four coil-disks in the assembly. Each coil-disk has 1.5 turns, so there is a total of 6 turns in the coil. The magnetic core is made from iron powder mixed with epoxy.

This electromagnet did not work very well. With a current of tens of amps it can barely move a paperclip. Poor performance is probably mostly due to the low permeability of the magnetic core. It is possible that the same device with a solid iron/steel core would work much better.

Maybe you can improve on the design, or at least avoid making the same mistakes that we did. The construction techniques may also be of some interest. We used plastic castings, but the disks can probably be printed or laser-cut. The use of multiple disks avoids the overhang problem common in 3D printers, but it does not capitalize on the printer\'s strengths, such as the ability to prin