I may be missing something obvious, but are dipole electromagnets always far weaker than parallel pole magnets(not sure if that's the proper term)? I have noticed that the average 6 watt parallel pole electromagnet will generate around 100-125lbs of holding force, or power (my observation comes sales charts for electromagnets). Now a similar sized dipole electromagnet running on 6 watts seems to be lucky if it can hold 10 pounds.
It doesn't seem to make much sense to me that just because your making use of both poles, the power of the electromagnet jumps by an order of magnitude. Around 10X here. Any thoughts?
Hi there,
If i understand your question correctly, you want to compare the total force at the end of two
magnets, one made by "paralleling" two and another made by putting them end to end in "series".
You have noticed that the 'parallel' method makes a magnet that is stronger than when in 'series'.
One of the things about magnet force is that it decreases over distance. That's why distance is in
the denominator of many formulas involving a magnetic force. This means that the longer the
distance, the weaker the force. When you put two magnets in 'parallel' you get more strength
then when you put them in 'series' because the distance from say the center of the magnet to the
work surface is much shorter than when they are in series, simply because the length is longer
and the magnetic core material is the same in both magnets.
For electromagnets it also depends on how you wire them together. Wired in parallel they should
be stronger because in series they have together more resistance and that means less current
and that means less force.
Also, are you sure it is actually 10 times the strength, or is it more like 4 or 8 times stronger or
something like that, and if so, where did you get that data? For a really rough calculation, two
magnets in parallel would have about 1/2 the distance as the two in series, and also would
have twice the contact area, so those taken together might give us 2^2*2 times more strength
(which is 8 times that of the series combination).