Electro Magnet Drops For 'Wounds to the Face'

For those of you who saw or have been involved in 'Wounds to the Face' you may know that the Placards which drop during the show were triggered by electro magnets. At the start of the production process we planned on using a device called a Solenoid. This device [Image 1 below] works by using an electro magnetic field to attract a pin into it. We planned on building a wooden housing for the solenoid so that when the pin was attracted into it a ring attached to the Placard would drop, therefore unravelling the material. However, the downwards force of the rolled placard on the Pin was too much weight for the solenoid to work.

Solenoid