Magnetic end-of-arm tooling is quietly displacing vacuum in steel-handling cells: no compressor, no cups to wear out, and — with permanent or electropermanent magnets — a grip that fails safe on power loss.
Automation buys outcomes: cycle time, energy, failure modes. Magnetic tooling wins on all three where the workpiece is ferrous, and the switchable/electropermanent generation (“programmable in time”) is already standard kit. Correlation-coded magnetization (“programmable in space”) adds self-alignment and identity on top — the parts of the problem grippers still solve with cameras and fixtures.
OnRobot’s MG10 collaborative-robot gripper holds ferrous parts magnetically and keeps holding through a power loss — the safety property vacuum can’t offer. Configurable grip strength, no air supply.
Magswitch’s switchable permanent-magnet tooling — on/off with a rotation, no continuous power — anchors welding fixtures and EOAT; the company cites up to 90% reduction in compressed-air use versus vacuum in converted cells [vendor figure].
Electropermanent chucks and tool-changers hold with zero standby power and swap tooling on an electrical pulse — shipping across machine-tool and robotics catalogs.
Coded pairs that pull a part into registration in the last millimetres — cheap passive error correction under a camera-guided place. Industrial Magnetics’ SmartMag and Polymagnet keyed/align pairs are purchasable; a documented factory deployment is not public, so this stays illustrative.
Why coded · Align + key together: the fixture accepts only the right part, and centers it.
MIT’s M-Blocks — cubes that flip, roll and self-assemble using internal flywheels and edge magnets — preview the modular-robotics endgame: structure decided by magnet pattern. Research, not product.
Why coded · The academic soft-robotics frontier goes further: programmable magnetization printed into elastomer microrobots (MIT, Nature 2018; Nature Comms 2024–25).