coat

EM Field protection

by donr - 2013-10-12 10:10:58

DFNX: You are, I think, looking for protection from EMI (Electromagnetic Interference). It does not exist in the commercial world - at least not that I can find.

This is a controversial subject. LOTS of our members safely arc weld. The cut off seems to be about 100 AMPS Dc in the welding cables. DO NOT take that as gospel, however. BUT - if you use our search function, you can find out more.

As to a protective coat. You would need a coat that has a completely enclosed "Faraday Cage" around your body. It would really have to enclose your entire body. A Faraday Cage is an enclosure made of any HIGHLY conductive metal - like copper, silver , gold. It can be a thin sheet & often is nothing more than a fine mesh, like window screen.

But even that would not protect you from high intensity DC generated magnetic fields. Steady state, non-varying magnetic fields can penetrate conductors like they are not even there. To confirm that nugget from a course I took nearly 50 yrs ago, I just found a supermagnet name tag holder, grabbed a quarter w/ a copper center in it & the magnet grabbed the name tag through the quarter like it wasn't there.

The Faraday Cage only protects against varying fields - like generated by a sine wave (Like our AC house current) or the square waves used by some MIG & TIG welders.

Someone asked about a lead coat - all that would do is give the wearer a lot of good exercise wearing the heavy weight around. All lead protects from is high energy radiation, like X-Rays.

The best you can do is keep the amperage down, keep the cables a couple feet away from your device & don't hold the hand piece close to your PM. Magnetic fields drop off very fast w/ distance. Also stay away from the esoteric methods of electric welding.

Oh, BTW, don't apply for any jobs welding submarine hulls.

Sorry I cannot give you any betyter help.

Don