Ask any South African plant engineer what happens in September and the answer is scheduling: this is the stretch of the production calendar when maintenance teams lock in the shutdown slots that will see them through to year end, and conveyor protection has a habit of climbing the priority list. Mechani Mags, the Boksburg conveyor magnet manufacturer operating out of Bisset Road in JetPark, is using the approach to the final quarter to highlight a corner of its range that plant engineers frequently write off as out of reach: the low head-room variant of its dry-type overband magnet, alongside oil to dry conversions of units already in service and the spares and auxiliaries that keep an installed magnet earning its keep.
The obstacle is entirely practical. A suspended overband belt magnet needs to sit above a conveyor with sufficient clearance to work, and where a plant was designed with a tight layout, or where extra equipment has since been crowded in above or beside the belt line, that clearance is missing. What follows is a stretch of conveyor running with no ferrous protection at all, not through any reluctance on the operator’s part, but because a standard suspended unit will not physically fit into the gap. Mechani Mags names a low head-room model among the headline features of its dry-type magnet, and its products page confirms that magnets can be adapted to fit into restricted spaces.
What the dry-type magnet does on a conveyor line
Magnetic separators earn their place on a conveyor for a single purpose: pulling ferrous tramp metal out of a moving stream of material before it arrives at something costly. Picture a stray bolt, a snapped tooth, an offcut of reinforcing bar or a fragment of some earlier repair riding the belt into a crusher, a mill or a screen, and you have exactly the kind of incident that converts a planned week into an unplanned one. Mechani Mags describes its dry-type units as suspended self-cleaning over-band belt magnets built to strip tramp metal from conveyed materials across mining, processing and recycling, and the company frames them as conveyor cleaning and protection equipment rather than as material upgrading equipment.
Continuous operation comes down to the self-cleaning arrangement. The overband belt carries captured metal off the face of the magnet and drops it clear of the conveyor, which means the magnet keeps doing its job without anyone stopping the line to clear it by hand. Where tramp metal loading is light enough that a scheduled clean will do, Mechani Mags offers the same magnet in a manual-clean version.
Why the dry design changed the retrofit conversation
Earlier overband electromagnets were oil cooled, and oil drags along its own list of liabilities: contamination should a seal give way, corrosion, the sheer mass of the unit and the downtime tied up in managing the fluid. Mechani Mags builds today’s generation with no oil and no cooling fans. According to the company, the dry design earns a premium energy efficiency rating on a par with the IE4 standard and runs 50 percent more energy efficient than standard models, producing the same magnetic power on half the electrical input.
The product page lays out the engineering behind that claim. Rectangular cross-section aluminium coils are insulated to Class H at 180 degrees Celsius. The unit is fitted with a stainless steel wear plate and internally welded lifting lugs, driven by a WEG IE3 motor paired with an SEW gearbox, and turns on four crowned carbon steel pulleys. A belt-slip and belt-tear detection system operates in tandem with a PT100 temperature probe, so the magnet reports its own condition instead of failing without warning. Rated IP66, it is fully sealed against dust and water, and it is engineered to run at any position and incline angle, inverted included. Ex certification is available for underground work and other hazardous installations.
Oil to dry conversion without rebuilding the power supply
Plants still running an older oil-cooled overband unit are offered a conversion path in place of a full replacement project. Mechani Mags states that it can generally convert an existing oil-cooled electromagnet into an equivalent strength dry-type electromagnet with no need to alter existing power supply units. On a shutdown plan that counts, because the cost and programme risk in an upgrade of this sort normally live in the electrical work and the structural steel rather than in the magnet itself.
The workshop backs the same logic. Mechani Mags services and upgrades magnets of any make or brand, not only its own, and reports that its Boksburg workshop can take on any size magnet up to 20 tons. Loan units may be on hand while a customer’s own magnet is being worked on, the workmanship is guaranteed, and the company provides a free assessment with a strip and quote on a faulty magnet delivered to the JetPark workshop, or will organise collection.
Detection and removal are different jobs
Conveyor metal detector equipment tends to come up in the same conversation as overband magnets, yet the two functions are worth pulling apart when a plant maps out its protection strategy. A detector alerts the control room that metal is on the belt and can trigger a stop or a diverter. A magnet physically hoists the ferrous fraction out of the material stream and discharges it. Mechani Mags operates on the removal half of that pairing, and its site assessment service is designed to work out what a given conveyor and material stream genuinely require before any equipment gets specified.
The wider product range
Dry magnetic separator units are the flagship of the range, though they sit within a wider catalogue. The ferrochrome magnet draws on rare earth magnet elements and is built to separate ferrochrome from slag. Lifting magnets come as extra heavy duty sealed units for scrap handling, ball loading and furnace loading, with a choice of duty cycles, and the company states plainly that they are not meant to be suspended over conveyor belts. Demagnetising coils demagnetise material passing through the centre of the coils, while drum magnets and magnetic pulleys separate material as it discharges over the head end of a belt. Fan-cooled electromagnets and the older oil-cooled self-clean and manual-clean overband types stay on the list, together with permanent magnets and fully custom designs.
Auxiliaries and spares keep the installed base running
A magnet sitting idle because a gearbox or a run of belting cannot be found is a magnet protecting nothing. Mechani Mags stocks power supply units to suit any mains supply voltage up to 1000VAC at 50 or 60Hz, control panels compatible with almost any electromagnet system, three-phase heavy duty solid-state bridge rectifiers and appropriate DC cabling. Adjustable suspension chain slings arrive complete with rating and identification tags and a certificate of compliance. Beam crawlers and trolleys come in motorised, non-motorised and geared-chain-pull versions, together with spring-driven cable reeling drums and festoon systems for DC cable runs. Replacement parts span belts, pulleys, gearboxes, motors, bearings, shafts, couplings and DC terminal poles. Type F flame retardant conveyor belting ships with test certificates, and reinforced heavier duty belting is offered specifically for use with magnets.
Site services and compliance work
Mechani Mags keeps a trained site service team on call throughout the year and ready to travel worldwide. The on-site scope takes in gauss, or magnetic strength, testing and reporting, routine inspection reporting, certificate of compliance inspection, testing and reporting, commissioning support and release inspections, fault finding, installation assistance, general repairs and part replacement where these can be handled in place, and site assessment for a new magnet application. For an operation gearing up for an audit or wrapping up a shutdown scope, that pairing of testing and documentation usually matters as much as the hardware.
Head office and workshop are located at 30 Bisset Road, corner Hargan, JetPark, Boksburg, 1460, in Gauteng, with the office trading from 07:30 to 16:30 Monday to Thursday and 07:30 to 14:30 on Friday. The company ships worldwide and publishes its company profile under the banner 50 Years Strong. Full product detail, downloadable technical documents, support services and contact options are laid out on the Mechani Mags website at https://africanmagnets.com/.
About Mechani Mags
Mechani Mags is a South African manufacturer of conveyor magnets and magnetic separators for tramp metal removal across the mining, processing and recycling sectors. Working from a head office and workshop in JetPark, Boksburg, Gauteng, the company designs and builds dry-type suspended self-cleaning overband belt magnets, ferrochrome magnets, lifting magnets, drum magnets, demagnetising coils and custom magnet solutions, and supplies the control panels, belting, chain sets and spares that keep them running. It repairs and upgrades magnets of any make in a workshop rated for units up to 20 tons, carries out oil to dry conversions, and delivers on-site gauss testing, inspection and compliance reporting through a service team that travels both locally and internationally.
Media Contact
Mechani Mags
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +27 11 397 6870
Website: https://africanmagnets.com/
