Material Handling - Lifting Magnets

For quite some time we have been looking for a better way to handle heavy plate steel without having to load and muscle it around with a forklift. We have a 4x8 plasma table. In our search we came across the lifting magnet concept but after doing research we found that the standard conventional lifting magnets are only rated for a minimum thickness of 1/4" material. As the material gets thinner the effectiveness of the magnet drastically drops off. The magnet needs to have depth to really lock on. We stumbled across a fairly new product that is made in Germany by a company called Alfra. Their US distributor is located in East Dundee, IL 847-844-8900. The product is the TML lifting magnets. www.alfratools.com They rate their magnets all the way down to 16 GA material.

We ended up buying two of the TML 250 magnets. We attach them to a spreader bar and use an overhead jib crane to load steel now. You could do the same with a fork lift. This makes loading steel so much easier now. It also makes off loading cut up leftovers easy as well. One of our concerns was that it would lift the slats up with the steel but it doesn't even phase them. When lifting up steel off of a stack it is necessary to place a small wedge of some form between the sheets of steel. I use a flat pry bar (nail puller) on just one corner. Just a little air gap will help prevent the magnets from grabbing multiple sheets below. The first time we went to use the magnets we didn't have any separation between the steel and we picked up five 4x8 sheets of 1/4" plate. The magnets are very strong.