Maintaining Clean Yard Conditions Passively Using a Rear Mounted Forklift Magnetic Sweepers
Summary
Some industrial processes generate metal debris continuously. The Midwest Gate and Fence Company in Iowa has trucks coming in daily with fences that have been taken down, leaving waste fence wire clippings all over the yard. Cleaning this material up is an ongoing job that can be accomplished by using a rear mounted forklift magnet. Mounting a magnet on the rear of the forklift lets the lift truck go about its normal duties without being impeded while also collecting metal and preventing damage to vehicles and personnel on site.
Double Function
Richard at the Midwest Gate and Fence Company operates the Manitou forklift daily and is responsible for its operation and the Forager XL magnetic sweeper on the back of it. Richard said that the company used to use a simple fork mounted magnet from a competitor that didn’t work well with the Manitou. The fork mounted magnet was weak and hard to see past the mast of the Manitou, so it got ran into the ground multiple times, causing the collected metal to get wiped off since it didn’t have wraparound function or enough magnetic power to hang on to the collected metal. Having to take the forklift off its main duties to clean up the yard with a fork mounted magnet slows productivity and impedes regular operation. Having a magnet mounted on the back of the forklift allows the forklift to perform its normal operations while also collecting metal from the yard. The Forager XL can collect more metal during a week than the fork mounted model since it is permanently attached to the forklift and is picking up metal all day while the forklift is working rather than just running around with a fork mounted magnet occasionally. The tires on the Manitou were previously getting regular flats from cut up fence wires, when this happened the rim on the forklift bent, causing a very costly repair bill and putting the forklift out of duty for 3 weeks until a new rim came in. The Forager XL was selected to help remedy this issue because of its magnetic power and offroad capabilities that complement the Manitou forklift that it is mounted on.
Video Transcript
But here’s the debris collection of what they got. Like I said in the video, it is a fence company, so it makes sense that a lot of it’s just fence wire. So these, I picked up before you guys got here. They told me to clean it off—oh, yeah, oh, that’s fun—and it had a bunch of stuff on it. So this is just a, uh, oh, this part of the knuckle of a fence. Okay, these are pretty damn sharp—those’ll pop a tire. But yeah, this bolt’s still good. You could use that still. You picked up a blade, a reciprocating blade.
Yeah, that’s quite a bit. I mean, every single one of these—well, not the little stuff, but these bigger ones here—these could all probably puncture that stuff. But yeah, there’s the debris collection—that was just since you guys got here.
Oh, that’s just from today?
Yeah.
Okay, so this is just from about, what, an hour and a half? Had me clean it right before you got here—make it look nice.
Yeah, so the magnet was clean when we got here, and that’s just from the hour and a half of running around.
And you guys have only had it for about a month, right?
So, a little bit over a month. So eventually you should get less once you pick it all up, right, you’d think, but these guys are messy.
So, but yeah, I love it.
That’s good.
I think you might have had some stuff stuck on the bottom, too, like if you—when you clean it off, a lot of it, sometimes it’ll jump back on here. And then, um, if this gets stuck between the sleeve and the housing, then it’s hard to pull off, right?
Yeah, but you don’t really want to spike yourself cleaning it off.
We did give you a nice tarp to drop everything on, but I just put it on the floor. I have to sweep that up later—we’ll just run it back over. But this thing doesn’t look too damaged, other than just this corner piece, but I think it’s just a combination of the dirt. And it looks like there’s something dragging here.
Yeah.
Oh—yeah, when you normally pull the sleeve off there, if you got a just a damp rag or something, you can wipe all the debris from the bottom of the actual housing right here, because sometimes there’ll be stuff just floating. You see all those filings—that’ll accumulate over time, and it’ll make it harder to pull that sleeve off, so there’ll be something stuck here.
Yeah, it looks like there was a screw or something stuck in there. It works; just got to pull it off the other way. But yeah, the hand—come, I know you could do that, but yeah, this is going to be a—it already is off. Well, works—it seems to work pretty well. You guys have it set pretty high, but it’s a big-ass magnet. We have that thing tested, that if you have it a foot off the ground, it’ll pick up a 2 and 1/2-inch nail. So when you’re running it around at like 6 inches—even, you’re not moving very fast in this thing either—so it’s pretty easy to pick everything up.
Yeah, Jake was saying you guys had an old fork-mounted one on here?
Yeah, at some point. Didn’t work for the—it’s here somewhere. Um, it was a pain, real pain, right? You know, I had to have it on the fork and then I can’t see with the mast.
Oh, yeah, so it’s so thick. I can barely see it as it is, and hitting the ground with it all the time, and every time I’m going, you know, the ground level changes, I’d have to adjust the fork up or down, and you know you’re not going to be on target every time, so I always bottom out. And they would scrape across, you know, fall off, or—it was a pain.
That’s what we hear. We got ones that go on your fork and they’ll just—they ride with the ground. So, they got wheels on them and then like a suspension system, so they kind of go up and down; you set the forks at one height. This is better ’cause you can still use the forklift.
Right, right.
That’s the idea. It’s like you don’t even know it’s there, but it’s doing its job.
Yep.
So, yeah, I don’t have to worry about that stuff anymore.
Perfect for Tougher Terrain
Putting a magnetic sweeper on a forklift will always lower the offroad capabilities of the forklift. The Manitou forklift at Midwest Gate and Fence Company was designed to work in tougher terrains, with that in mind the Forager XL was created to be able to collect metal debris while set at higher sweeping heights and has provisions to allow for travelling in tough terrains without damaging the magnet itself from bottoming out. Check out the following videos to see the Forager XL ‘s provisions for surviving bottom outs and hits. The Forager XL is perfect for running in yards that may have potholes or obstacles that require setting the magnet higher off the ground for the sake of ground clearance.
Video Transcript
So one of the concerns of putting a magnet on the back of your forklift, especially a unit like this with off-road focused tires and all the ground clearance, is you’re going to lose a lot of capability of driving through rougher terrain. Now, this yard doesn’t really have too rough terrain because they level it out quite often with the box grader that’s running in the background, but we’re just going to show you, using this big pipe, the approach angle that you would normally have on a forklift versus what happens once you stick a magnet on it.
So your approach angle is measured by the back of the tire to the bumper. This is your typical angle; you could theoretically back up a hill in this Manitou forklift and still be able to go up it. Now, with the Forager on it, it’s going to be measured from the back of the tire to the lowest point of the magnet, which is here, so that’s quite a difference—you’re losing quite a bit there.
But because the Forager XL has the swinging capability and also is able to come up, you get some of that angle back. It’s still a compromise, but you’re compromising between having flat tires versus not, and how much off-road capability you need. So that’s why, in this place—not too rough a terrain—it makes sense to have the magnet on the back, but you don’t lose all of your off-road capability because as this thing swings—so, Em, if you want to follow the pipe with the angle of the magnet—so this thing will swing up. You get a little bit of clearance back with it.
So we’ll do that one more time; we’ll swing it up here. Here you get another couple inches, raising that angle up, and that works both ways; it swings either way on the forklift, so forward and backward you get the same approach angle.
So we’ve used this other forklift to simulate what I like to call the jump function. It’s essentially if you really bottom this thing out hard, like hopping off a curb or a sharp drop-off, there’s provisions in the Forager XL to move up about 2 and 1/2 inches. That’s accomplished using the pins that are in the mounting system that go to the forklift—I’ve shown that in a different video but I’ll probably cut to it here—and you can see in the mounting system to the forklift here, there are those pins. That’s basically what all the weight of the Forager XL rides on—are those two pins—and the triangular slots there allow it to go up and down.
So we have it jacked up right now, just with another lift here, and that gets you some more ground clearance. Now, you’re not going to be picking up metal from this high—it’s way too high—but it’s there, so if you are driving around in really rough conditions, you’ll get that extra ground clearance you want.
But as you can see, once it’s jacked up like this—if you want to measure the angle there—it’s a little bit taller, so you get some of your approach angle back as it goes up, and then it will also pivot from this point. So you do compromise some off-road capability using the Forager XL, but it’s designed in a way to make it as minimal as possible while still being able to collect debris.
So this thing will pick up a nail from, I think, 12 inches, and they have it set at about 6 inches, so you’ve got 6 inches of ground clearance to work with, which is more than any other magnetic sweeper on the market. And then you also have these provisions built in to swing and jump, so if you really do drive around in the rough stuff like this Manitou is meant for, you’re not losing too much capability by having the magnet on the back, and then you’re still getting the benefit of collecting any metal that might be out there.
Video Transcript
So I’ll take the back bolts off, I’ll show it pivoting forward, yeah, and then I’ll take—the, I’ll start with these ones, yeah, and then it’ll pivot back, then these ones, and pivot forward. Okay, sounds good.
Emmett—so Emmett’s going to pop the bolts out of this back of the Forager XL here. So these bolts are both installed from the factory, but they don’t actually need to be there. They are there so if you don’t have the clearance between your forklift and the Forager XL, it won’t swing. But this Manitou has a ton of clearance, so we’re going to pop them both out because this guy was saying he was running into stuff backing up. So we’ll pop both the bolts out so the thing can swing forward and backwards easily, and that’ll prevent any further damage to the magnet. Looks like they hit something pretty good on the other side already—there’s a bend in the sleeve—but taking these bolts out will prevent any additional damage.
Looks like they hit something pretty good. That’s just from backing up—stuff, backing it up into ruts and mounds in the yard. So we’re going to pop these bolts out so the thing can swing freely, and that’ll probably prevent some damage in the future going forward.
So now we’ve got both the bolts popped out on each of the hangers. So, Emmett, you’ll give it a kick. You see it pivots forward and backwards there, so that’s going to prevent a lot of damage if you ever hit anything moving forwards or backwards, because the magnet will just swing out of the way rather than be held on by those big ass bolts and probably causing damage to the sleeve if you hit something. Because it’s not rigid anymore, it can now move out of the way, distribute the force into momentum rather than bending the aluminum.
So this is just an example of the swinging motion so you can see it swings up and out of the way, and that prevents any damage to the magnet. You’re not going to lose any debris even if you do this, because you can see there’s some stuff stuck on the front of the magnet. That’s because of the wraparound function. So if you hit it forward or backwards with debris—the magnet gets hit forward or backwards with the ground—it’ll still stick on the magnet.
So now we’ve got that pivot function out of the way, you’re less likely to break anything. If you watch, he goes forwards, it’ll pivot hitting something else, and then return back to center. So that prevents a lot of damage to the magnet housing and the aluminum sleeve. Now, the aluminum sleeve is really heavy duty, but with a giant machine like this, you’re capable of doing a lot of damage, so that’s why we’ve got that swinging function and also the jump function, as you saw in some of the other videos on this page. So it’ll jump up and out of the way if you need to as well.
Owner’s Impressions
Jake at Midwest Gate and Fence Company gave Bluestreak’s designers direct input on the design for the Forager XL he gave us key measurements from the Manitou forklift to ensure that the magnet will fit on the forklift. After Running the Forager XL for over a month we got Jake to give his thoughts on the performance of the magnetic sweeper and how it has worked for preventing flat tires on their job site. The Forager XL has collected a ton of debris in the month it has been used, with noticeably less debris getting collected over time which indicates that the yard is becoming cleaner while the forager operates every day. The magnet used to need to be cleaned daily when they first started running it but now after running it for over a month the magnet only needs to be cleaned every 3-4 days.
Video Transcript
We were just talking to Richard, and he had this thing packed with—he said that was just from today, that pile there.
Yeah, there’s been a lot. That’s a good thing you got it then.
Yeah, the first couple days, really.
So is that just from, like, just cutting up the chain links, or is it like pallets, that sort of stuff?
It’s them coming back and cleaning their trucks off.
Oh, okay, so like after delivery, they just sweep it all in the yard?
Yeah, so yeah, a bunch of our cut-up ties.
Yeah. If you look on this corner over here, that’s where Richard said he dinged it into a rock pile or something.
Okay, so he thought it was stuck on there, but I think he just had like a nail stuck in between the sleeve and the magnet itself, so it was like just hard to pull off. But we pulled it off the other way, it was fine.
Okay, so it’s still sturdy, but now we have to set up the swing so you’re less likely to break it.
Okay. How hard was this thing to install on here?
I didn’t do it. I can get the people that did it, but I mean, I think it showed up at 3 and it was on probably like 4:30, so an hour and a half install probably.
Yeah, probably would say an hour. I came here, but Richard said he’s pretty happy with this thing so far. Like it’s worked out—cutting down on flats and that sort of thing out here.
Yep.
So were you getting them regularly, like on this thing, or just, you know, once in a blue moon?
No, we’d get them. Trucks every so often, trailers, skid loaders, yeah.
It sucks getting a skid steer down. Those are tough to change. I was thinking, like, this is your only lift you have here, right? Like the main one?
No, there’s some other ones. Yeah, like you have the boom one I saw there.
Yeah, there’s a couple boom ones, but—
So if this thing goes down, it slows everything down around here.
Yep. Yeah, it’s not even just like—
So I guess you probably plug these things; you don’t have to replace them all the time just from a puncture?
It usually breaks a rim.
Really?
Oh, I guess, yeah, once the tire pops, goes down on the rim, usually it’s a rim issue and they’re hard to find.
Really? I never even thought of that.
Yeah, that sucks. When you get a flat, you had to change the rim on it?
No, it was down, sitting right here for probably a month and a half trying to get some rims custom made for it.
Holy, you had to get them cut? Weird size?
Yeah, and there was only one and it was in some other country.
Well, it is—yeah, it’s a weird bolt pattern and the giant hub, right? That’s probably the issue.
It’s a goofy one, yeah.
Richard was saying that you guys just cleaned it off this morning and we already got that much of a pile. I mean, this stuff can easily puncture that tire.
Oh, yeah, and we’ve even got some of these bolts in tires. Bigger bolts, yeah, this carriage bolt here. Yeah, this thing’s—no, it’s working good.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was showing in the one video how it really changes the angle. Like, you can’t back up into the steep hills anymore, but you guys are pretty flat out here.
We’re pretty flat and he just had to get used to it.
Yeah, and I think he’s used to it now.
Yeah, that makes sense.
This thing we showed—like, have you seen the—so these can go up if you really bottom it out. This will go up about two inches, so that’s why I had him get the boom truck out there and he lifted it up, so if you really, really, really beat it out, it’ll go up about two inches and swing out of the way so you don’t break anything.
But yeah, so he said you’re—so how often do you guys clean it off?
Well, the first couple days, it was every day, yeah, for probably a week. And now it’s, she’s probably getting about three, four days.
Yeah, so that—like, how much normally comes off then, you would just say?
Quite a bit. Uh, it’s getting better. It’s definitely getting better.
Yeah, but first couple days, you’d pull it off and it’d be full.
That’s what I was saying to Richard too, is like, it should get better over time, right? As you go around, you shouldn’t have as much, but you’ll still get the regular stuff, right, ‘cause guys are coming in every day, jumping down. That’s kind of the point of these things is, you know, you just had a problem yard, you rent something and do it, but if it’s continuously forming, then this is a nice proactive way to do it.
Yep.
Like Richard was saying, you guys had the fork-mounted one before.
Yep.
And that didn’t—
Yeah, the problem with that too is you can’t use the forklift, and then you gotta be sitting there adjusting it the whole time, and yeah. So with this thing, you just leave it on while the forklift works and it does the whole job for you.
No, we’re happy with it. It’s made a difference for sure.
Yeah, that’s good. Looks about the right size for this thing.
Yeah, you’ve seen the other ones we have; they’re about this big, like half the size, almost. The biggest one you—yeah, the biggest one we had until this one.
But any other companies out there that make magnets, they only sell stuff that’s about an inch tall, and like, trying to stick that on this thing, you’re not doing anything with it.
Oh, yeah.
Like, you know, you have to—that’s what that fork one was, was only—you know, going to do, especially if you’re not driving, like you have to go half a mile an hour.
Yep. This thing’s got enough juice where you can, you know, yeah, go quick and it’ll still pick it up.
Yeah, I’m glad you guys are happy with it. Came with the right price tag.
Yeah, even—I mean, it’s well worth it. Yeah, I mean, ‘cause if that thing goes down—price, and we sell the replacement parts, so if you guys do actually break the sleeve someday—but they’re pretty damn sturdy. But it is, you know, a 30,000-lb thing backing into an immovable object. Something’s got to give.
I’m sure we’ll, you know, dent it up eventually. Everybody does eventually. We had a smaller version of this thing—the four and a half by four and a half sleeve—and to test it, I ran it over with a tractor, and no problem.
Really?
Yeah, they’re pretty damn sturdy, especially ‘cause inside of yours, it’s just pure ceramic, so it’s hard as a rock. It won’t crush as well.
Anyways, but have you guys ever adjusted it up and down at all?
We haven’t. We put it on and that’s where it’s been.
Perfect. That’s what you want.
And it’s working, so—
Yeah, I’m guessing that’s about the height. Yeah, I think we recommend, like, three to six, and that’s about six, so close enough.
Yeah, we could go a little lower; you don’t really need to, as long as it’s still picking up stuff.
Oh, yeah, if you notice the difference—getting less flats, doing its job, right? So that seems to be pretty good then.
But yeah, you guys don’t have too much terrain out here, so—but Richard, it’s not—these are just cut off from the fence, right?
Yep, like disconnecting the links. So if we go doing repairs, they’ll cut the links and it’ll be a bunch of them. Yeah, and then they’ll throw them on the truck and instead of cleaning their truck off like they’re supposed to, yeah, ends up in the yard, they’ll throw it on the ground.
Now you got something to pick it up with and we’ll leave you a nice little pile of crap here to do something with.
Oh, that’s fine.
But yeah, I think that’s all we do. Now we got your pivot set up. I don’t know what you want to do with the bullets; like, we just stuck them up here, and the wrenches are up here.
Okay. We can probably leave those out.
Yeah.
Yeah, there’s no real need to keep ‘em in at all.
Yeah, that thing, you’ll just free it up, even when he’s back into that pile back there, like, the thing just moves so effortless.
Okay.
Yeah, thing’s got way more of get to it.
Yeah, that’ll help with any damage, sort of thing.
Yep, no, we’ll leave it like that. That’s good. I think that’s—
Continuous Metal Debris Production needs Continuous Metal Debris Cleanup
The Forager XL is a great passive way to keep your work area clean, as forklifts travel through the top traffic areas of your jobsite and by attaching a magnet to the forklift you have a continuous cleaning operation going on. In an industry like fence manufacturing, metal debris is always being produced so having a continuous cleaning operation keeps the level of debris on the job site at a manageable level and prevents excessive flat tires. The photo below shows the amount of metal the Forager XL picked up in the span of two hours.
Metal debris collected with Forager XL in Midwest Fence & Gate Company’s yard
Forager XL Magnet on Manitou Lift Truck on Site
Video Transcript
So here we got Richard back in the old Manitou forklift with the Forager XL on the back. These guys have just installed this thing about a month and a half ago, and previously they were getting flat tires because this is a fence supply company, so they have cut off some fence links and all that kind of stuff out here, and the steer tires on this forklift were getting flats just from its normal operations around the yard.
So, since installing this new Forager XL that they had some input on the design—they actually reached out to us asking for a larger version of the Forager, hence where the Forager XL comes from—and we delivered. So this is the Forager XL that they had input in designing on their Manitou, and they were concerned about ground clearance because this is a bit of a rough yard. It’s not too bad right now; they flattened it out, but there are some areas near the recycling bins that get a bit torn up. So that’s where the Forager XL comes in, because you can have it like they have it—about 6 inches off the ground—and they said they’ve collected a ton of steel out of the yard with this thing, and it’s been quite beneficial to prevent flat tires on their skid steers and on the forklift.
So you can see with the Manitou here, this thing is built for off-road terrain. Now, they don’t really have too much off-road out here; like I said, it gets a little rough but nothing crazy. But the reason they wanted this lift truck in particular is for the lifting capacity—they move a lot of steel out here—so they need the 10,000 lb lift capacity, the Manitou, and this is what they ended up with. So this forklift, as you can see, it’s got huge ground clearance and that Forager XL on the back has that extra magnet power to maintain as much ground clearance as possible while still picking up metal debris.
Now, one thing they said they had going on out here was when they go to the recycling bins—which we’ll see later—there are some big gravel piles out there, and he said sometimes he backs into that. If there’s a lump on the ground or ruts or something, we’re going to take out the bolts on the back of the Forager XL that will allow it to swing and not get damaged for backing into anything. So once we get those bolts out, we’ll show you how the approach angle of the magnet doesn’t really affect the forklift too much. I mean, obviously, you’re going to lose a little bit of approach angle when you have something hanging off the back like this, but with that swinging ability, it doesn’t get too diminished from having the magnet on the forklift.
So, you can see the lift capacity required—why they got the Manitou out here—because that’s a lot of steel to move around. If we stuck our original Forager on this thing, it would look pretty puny next to that giant forklift, so that’s why we got the XL model—to make sure your forklift doesn’t look weird with a tiny magnet on a giant forklift. And extra magnetism is always good, so you can run these things higher off the ground and still collect debris. You can see the wrap-around function there working; the guy said he hits some ruts once in a while, and because the magnet housing is fully packed, none of it goes off the back of the magnet—it all just wraps around to the back side of it.
So, typical debris type out here is just going to be obviously cutoff chain link fence wire, and the Forager XL is more than powerful enough to pick that stuff up—even at the six or seven inches they’ve got it mounted at, it should pick it up no problem. This forklift doesn’t seem to be running around too fast, so that makes it easier to collect the debris as well.
We’ve relocated to the front of the Midwest Gate Fence Supply over here for Midwest Fence and Gate Company, and we’re just going to go through some normal operation of this thing. This is typically what they do. So, like I said in the other videos, the yard isn’t actually very rough out here. They have the Manitou just for the lifting capacity it has, but that Forager XL works good on the back of it. It doesn’t take out too much ground clearance—this thing has a ton already—but in a yard like this, it’s perfect for it because this lift is so high off the ground, the regular rear-mount forklift magnets wouldn’t look right on this thing, and they’re not going to be up to the task of picking up any kind of metal debris from the height that this thing operates at.
So, that Forager XL—you can see we took the bolts out of the back, so now it’s swinging freely, and that just prevents any chance of damaging it too badly if you back into something. You get a little bit of notice before stuff really goes wrong. So, the front tires on this Manitou are solid—well, they’re foam-filled—but the steer tires are pneumatic, so they were getting some flat tires out here just from, obviously, the fence cutoffs, nails from pallets, that sort of thing. This is their primary lift on location; they don’t really have anything else that can move the big pieces of steel like this thing can. So when this goes down, it’s pretty expensive for the company because they got to get somebody out here—number one, to repair the tire; number two, if they need to move something and they can’t, that’s just causing downtime for everybody downstream of this machine.
So that’s a consideration when you’re thinking about the price tag of the Forager XL: how long, how much money is it going to cost you to have your machine down? If this is your primary lift and it goes down for an afternoon, everybody downstream—all the workers that need to process the steel it’s moving—can’t work. This thing can’t work, and you got to pay for a new tire, and big tires like this aren’t cheap.
Like I said before, if you got a location that needs as much ground clearance as this Manitou, you’re probably not too concerned about metal debris because you’re probably working on leveling it or actually building something there. But nice flat ground like this, you’re never going to have an issue with the ground clearance on this thing, and even if you do bottom it out or anything like that, like I showed in the other video, you’ve got lots of capabilities to not damage the magnet. This thing is built tough. Everything is really thick and reinforced, so if you do break it, you’ve got bigger problems, because this thing is built to take a beating. That aluminum sleeve is really durable, and then the steel frame—I think the whole thing itself weighs about 200 lbs., so it’s really thick steel, and it looks right at home on this big-ass forklift.
So we’ll probably get this thing cleaned off here in a second and just see the typical debris, what these guys pick up. And yeah, that’s what it—
Metal debris collected with Forager XL in Midwest Fence & Gate Company’s yard
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