Telescopic Magnetic Pickup (170-830mm)

Name: Telescopic Magnetic Pickup (170-830mm)
Brand: Harden
SKU: 660247

Item No. 660247

Price on request

Reach is what this tool sells. Collapsed it is 170mm — pen length, with a pocket clip, so it lives in a shirt pocket alongside a pen and a tester and weighs nothing. Extended it is 830mm, very nearly a metre of reach, which is a completely different tool: down a wall cavity, under a machine bed, behind a rack, into the bottom of a tall enclosure, along the floor beneath a bench that would otherwise have to be moved.

That range of nearly five to one is the point. Nobody carries a metre-long tool on the off-chance, so the tools that could reach are always in the van, and the moment you drop a screw down a cavity is never the moment you are willing to go and fetch anything. A pickup that is already in your pocket and extends to 830mm is the one you actually have when it is needed.

The telescopic shaft is rigid rather than flexible, and that changes what it is good at compared with a spring pickup. A rigid shaft transmits push, so you can drive it down a narrow gap, poke it under something, and steer it accurately at full extension — none of which a flexible shaft will do, since it simply buckles once there is any length out. The trade is that it will not go round corners. Straight-line depth is this tool; obstructed access is the spring one.

The pen-type handle with a pocket clip is a small detail that decides whether the tool is with you, and the clip is doing more work here than the specification suggests.

The work: retrieving dropped screws, nuts, clips and small components from wall cavities, floor voids, machinery, engine bays, control cabinets and equipment racks; fishing fixings out from under benches and heavy equipment; recovering items from drains, gratings and channels; and picking up dropped fasteners on a site floor without kneeling down.

The buyers are electricians working in cavities, risers and cabinets, air conditioning and refrigeration installers, vehicle and plant mechanics, machinery maintenance staff, panel builders, and hardware dealers selling to the trade.

Two limits worth knowing. It lifts ferrous metal only — steel and iron. Brass, aluminium, plastic and non-magnetic stainless will not respond, however good the magnet. And magnets do not mix with cards, mechanical watches, hard drives or sensitive instruments, so do not park it on a bench among them. Collapse it before it goes back in the pocket; a telescopic shaft left extended in a bag gets bent, and a bent section never slides properly again. Message us on WhatsApp for a price, or for it together with the spring pickup.