It's not so easy unfortunately. Reading the specs on the cheap chinese magnets more closely I might have spoken too soon, and the standard ones won't work probably. They pull 1.8 amps at 6V . 11W of heat in such a small package inside a plastic housing would be problematic. Even if at 5 volts it would be a bit lower. I'm afraid dialling back the current would also severely limit the holding power. On the other hand, they advertise at 35KG (minimum) holding force, which is about half the rated capacity of a 50/30, and their power draw figures based on run time by capacity listed is about 1 amp. So maybe they ARE using a standard 50/30 and running it at 5v with a resistor to tune the resistance and therefore power draw... But then I notice they don't actually use an Eyebolt at the bottom, but an eye nut, and the magnet appears to be secured with 3 screws from the outside, which is non standard... My engineering brain is contantly flipflopping between: "yeah, I can totally build that" and "no, they have a custom magnet that cannot be copied."Shannon SteelSlave wrote:Good. That shop is on vacation right now. I bet you could sell them here. If you gave them away to the world, you may flatten out that Covid curve.Gregovic wrote:While I really like the design and idea of those Magbound locks, I feel they're pretty dang expensive for what they are. The magnet itself looks like a standard 6v P50/30 DC magnet, (you can get those for about 8 to 10 dollars from AliExpress). The strike plate is 2 oversized fender washers. The eyes are an M8 eyebolt in the back and an M8 eyenut with an M8 countersunk screw on the strikeplate. The only tricky bit is the body, which looks like it is custom made on a lathe out of a single piece of nylon or POM and that is where most of the cost would be. Putting on my thinking cap, 50mm PVC sewer pipe exists ... I'll be off looking at what is available now, I might try to build one of these soon.
So I did the naughty thing engineers sometimes do and messaged a vendor what the cost for a custom magnet with OD 50mm, radial wire exit, 1 amp current draw at 5v with a holding force of >35kg would cost if custom ordered as single piece prototype and 100 piece lot . Then we'll know how doable it would be
The MagBound product is expensive, but I'm starting to understand why. After looking more closely, while it's a simple product, there appears to be a lot of (manual) labour involved in making it a polished and well made product, that are not obvious at first sight. Maybe it'll be possible to make a cheap-ish knockoff myself, and if I do I'll post a how to on this forum, but I doubt it'll be possible to make a competing product for much less cost (Especially since they seem to offer free shipping, which is probably about 10 to 20 euros in itself)
BTW: If anyone considers buying this, I'd consider going directly to the source: https://selfbondage-shop.com/. I suspect Etsy take quite a cut if ordered through there (plus you have to then pay for shipping).