If you’ve ever spent time browsing our hexagon brass standoffs page or chatting with our team, you’ve probably typed that exact question into a search bar at 2 a.m. while troubleshooting a prototype, or mid-solder on a weekend project. I get it—when you’re building a custom enclosure for a Raspberry Pi, mounting a speaker inside a vintage radio, or assembling a medical device that can’t accidentally stick to a nearby magnet, every tiny part matters. I’m Jake, one of the guys who’s been sourcing and tweaking brass standoffs for our team for almost a decade, and I can tell you: this question comes up more than you’d think. Today, I’m breaking it down like I would for a customer who just sent us an urgent message at 10 a.m. ET last week. No stuffy engineering jargon, no copy-pasted spec sheet fluff—just real talk about hexagon brass standoffs, magnets, and why the answer isn’t as simple as “yes” or “no.” Hexagon Brass Standoffs
First, let’s cut through the confusion. Most people ask this because they’ve had run-ins with the wrong standoffs before. A few years back, a customer reached out panicking—his team had ordered cheap, generic standoffs from a big box supply site, and half of them stuck to the magnetic parts of his circuit board assembly line, ruining a whole batch of prototypes. Turns out, those weren’t solid brass. They were brass-plated steel—same shiny color on the outside, but the core was low-cost steel, which is naturally ferromagnetic. That’s the mix-up most folks get into. So let’s start with the basics: what are our hexagon brass standoffs actually made of? We don’t cut corners here. All our hex standoffs are 100% solid brass, not plated. Brass is an alloy, right? The main ingredients are copper and zinc, sometimes small amounts of other metals like lead (for machinability) or tin, but almost zero iron. Iron is the only common metal that’s strongly magnetic at room temperature—steel is mostly iron, so that’s why steel standoffs stick. Copper and zinc? Not even a little.
Wait, hold on—before you go closing that tab, let’s talk about edge cases, because that’s where things get tricky. No material is ever perfectly 100% one thing, especially when we’re dealing with machining tolerances. Let’s say a customer orders a bulk run of 10,000 M3 hex standoffs. Sometimes, during the machining process at our factory (we work with a small, family-run shop in Wisconsin that’s been around since the 80s—they’re super meticulous, but even the best have tiny blips), a stray iron shaving might get left in a bin, or a single batch of brass might have a trace amount of iron from a recycling batch we use for some of our smaller sizes. How much? Usually less than 0.5% iron, per ASTM standards for free-machining brass. Is that enough to make the whole standoff magnetic? Probably not—most neodymium magnets won’t even notice that tiny amount. But if you’ve got a super sensitive application, like a lab sensor or a high-precision MRI component, that 0.1% iron trace is enough to give you a tiny signal blip. We’ve had a few customers in the medical space flag this, and we totally get it. That’s why we offer a “non-magnetic certification” for our critical applications—we test every lot with a gauss meter to make sure they fall below 1 gauss (the threshold for non-magnetic parts in most aerospace and medical specs) before shipping.
Another common confusion: what about hex drive hardware in general? I’ve seen forums where people argue that “all hex brass is slightly magnetic” because of the way it’s formed. Nope, that’s a myth. Hex shape here just refers to the external drive—you tighten it with a hex key or a nut driver—so the shape has nothing to do with the material’s magnetic properties. Same goes for threaded inserts, spacers, standoffs, whatever. If it’s solid brass, it’s non-magnetic. If it’s plated with brass over steel, it’ll stick. That’s the rule of thumb we tell every new customer, and 9 times out of 10, that’s all they need.
Let’s circle back to that customer I mentioned earlier—the one who ruined his prototypes with cheap plated standoffs. He’d bought a $10 batch of 50 standoffs from a site that didn’t specify “solid brass,” just “brass standoffs.” Our hex brass standoffs are priced competitively, but when you see a price that’s way too good to be true, it’s almost always plated. We’ve had a lot of customers switch from those cheap options after realizing their error, and now they come back to us for every subsequent order. It’s a relatable mistake—when you’re in a hurry for a build, you click the first listing that fits your size, and you don’t think to dig into the material spec.
I also get why this question feels so high-stakes. Last year, a customer who builds custom audio amplifiers reached out to say he’d been using our standoffs for years, but just found out a competitor was offering “magnetic brass standoffs” for his line of headphone enclosures. Wait—what? Turns out that competitor was using a mix of brass and steel inserts in their standoffs, not full solid brass. He wanted to switch, but was worried about affecting the sound quality (metal parts sticking to the enclosure can mess with audio frequencies, even if it’s a tiny effect). We tested a batch of our standoffs in his setup, and we found zero difference in frequency response. The solid brass is dense but non-ferrous, so it doesn’t create the magnetic resonance that would throw off sound. That was a win for him, and it’s a good example of how our material choice matters beyond just magnetism.
Another angle: what if you accidentally drop a steel screw next to your standoffs? Do they pick up the stray metal? That’s a super common follow-up question. Brass is a good conductor, and it’s slightly conductive for magnetism, but only in very specific, low-temperature conditions. At room temperature, it’s called a “paramagnetic” metal, which means it’s only attracted to extremely strong magnetic fields—stronger than the average neodymium magnet most hobbyists have on their workbench. So unless you’re standing next to an MRI machine or a particle accelerator, your hex brass standoffs won’t stick to a magnet, and they won’t pick up stray steel shavings unless you physically press them together. That’s a big relief for most builders, who don’t work in those lab-level environments.
Wait, let’s address one more myth I’ve seen on Reddit: “brass gets magnetic when it’s bent or machined.” Nope, that’s not a thing. The crystalline structure of brass doesn’t change enough during machining or forming to turn it ferromagnetic. The only way brass becomes magnetic is if you add iron, nickel, or cobalt to the alloy—and none of those are in our standard solid brass standoffs. We even do a test where we take a random standoff from every new batch and hold it up to our factory demo magnet (the same kind you’d get from a hardware store) to double-check. If it sticks, it gets rejected, no questions asked.
Now, for the folks who do have that super sensitive application: let’s talk solutions. If you need 100% non-magnetic standoffs, no trace iron allowed, we can work with you to source 99.9% pure brass (it’s a little softer, but perfect for precision machining) or even aluminum standoffs if you don’t need the corrosion resistance of brass. We’ve done runs for satellite components, lab equipment, and even some custom drone parts where magnetism is a hard no, and our team has experience working with those specs. Just reach out, tell us what you’re building, and we’ll send over samples for you to test.
I know this all might feel like a deep dive into a tiny part, but for anyone who’s ever had a whole build derailed by a single standoff, it’s not trivial. The last thing we want is for a customer to waste time, money, and materials because they got stuck with the wrong standoffs. That’s why we’re always happy to answer this question—no matter how many times it comes up. We don’t do pushy sales talk here; we just want to make sure you have the right parts for your project, whether you need 10 standoffs for a hobby build or 100,000 for a commercial line.
If you’re working on a project where magnetism is a concern, or you just want to test our standoffs for yourself, hit us up. We can send free samples, walk you through our material specs, and even troubleshoot any weird little issues that pop up. No hoops to jump through, no long forms to fill out—just real people who know their stuff when it comes to hex brass standoffs.
At the end of the day, hexagon brass standoffs’ magnetic properties boil down to one simple fact: solid brass is non-magnetic, plated brass over steel is magnetic. That’s it. All the edge cases and myths don’t change that core rule. The next time you’re ordering standoffs, don’t just look for the right size—check if it says “solid brass” and “non-magnetic” on the product page. If it doesn’t, shoot us a message, and we’ll be happy to confirm our specs. We’ve been in this game long enough to know that the small parts make the biggest difference, and we want ours to work for your project, not against it. Don’t overthink the magnetism thing—just make sure you’re buying solid brass, and you’re good to go.
Self-Clinching Fasteners References:
- American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Standard B16, Specification for Brass Rod, Bar, and Shapes
- National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. "Magnetic Properties of Common Metals and Alloys." 2022.
- Machinery’s Handbook. 31st Edition, Industrial Press, 2020.
- Aerospace Industries Association. "Non-Magnetic Material Requirements for Flight Hardware." 2021.
Zhanci Hardware Products Co.,Ltd
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