Author Archives: amartin

1. New Lower Cost Neodymium Magnet Option

   September 11, 2023 8:09 pm Leave a Comment

   Background

   You may have heard there’s a new, lower-cost Neodymium Iron Boron magnet option. This new option replaces some of the Neodymium with Cerium, which helps to reduce the cost of the magnet.

   A Bit of Neodymium History… Er, Science… Nope, History

   The popular Neodymium magnets are made up of a variety of materials, mostly Neodymium, Iron and Boron. They can also contain elements such as Dysprosium, Praseodymium, Cobalt, and a few other trace elements. The elements Neodymium, Dysprosium, Praseodymium are part of the group known as Rare Earths and are close to each other on the periodic table:

   When mining for rare earths, the ore dug out of the ground contains many of the rare earth elements in various concentrations. A good mine is generally one where 5% of the ore contains rare earths. That fraction of rare earth is then subdivided, with some elements being more prevalent than others. Usually, Neodymium and other elements that are useful for magnets are only a tiny fraction of that original 5%. But Cerium is, by far, the most prevalent element.

   While Cerium is a rare earth element, there haven’t been many applications that utilize it. Until now, the only noteworthy usage has been glass polishing and even that uses only a small fraction of the available Cerium.

   So Why Now?

   Given its lack of usage, there’s now a surplus of Cerium. Magnet manufacturers began experimenting with this surplus and found that substituting Cerium for some of the Neodymium can produce an effective and lower-cost magnet. Although magnets containing Cerium are a bit weaker than traditional Neodymium magnets, they can be used in less demanding applications for a meaningful cost savings.

   Aside from the performance hit, magnets containing Cerium look and behave exactly like their non-Cerium counterparts. They can be easily plated with nickel or zinc and will weigh the same.

   Pros and Cons

   As of January 2023, Neodymium was selling for $73 per kilogram. At the same time, Cerium was selling for $2.2 per kilogram. Since Cerium is substituting for some, but not all, of the Neodymium magnet and factoring for processing costs, the result is a 5% to 10% price reduction.

   However, since Cerium isn’t as effective as Neodymium at producing magnetism, magnets containing Cerium are generally only available in the lower grades, from Neo30 to Neo42.

   At moment, the default is to offer non-Cerium magnets. However, if an application warrants it, we may suggest it as an option. Want to learn more about Cerium and its cost-saving potential? Contact our engineering team today!

    

2. All of Your Permanent Magnet Questions Answered in New Permanent Magnet Reference Guide

   November 4, 2022 3:00 pm Leave a Comment

   Adams Magnetic Products is proud to announce the release of A3’s long-awaited Permanent Magnet Guide and Reference, spearheaded by our own Senior Applications Engineer, Mike Devine.

   The 111-page book includes easily understandable information about permanent magnetic products, their specifications, and applications, as well as helpful info about inspection, specification, and use, including the benefits and limitations of each material. A practical resource for anyone using or producing permanent magnetic materials, the book features a standard vocabulary, terminology, and symbols to help readers become more fluent in their understanding and usage of magnetic materials, assemblies, and systems.

   A must-have for anyone working in the magnet industry, the Permanent Magnet Guide and Reference is especially useful for engineers new to the field, businesses incorporating magnets into their product lines, and quality assurance operators. The guide also includes numerous references for additional research and discovery into specific areas of interest.

   Updating the guide, which was originally released in 1987, was a priority for Devine, who has chaired A3’s Permanent Magnet Division since January of this year. The A3 Permanent Magnet Division aims to increase the understanding, promotion, and effective use of magnetic materials, assemblies, and systems for the benefit of the Permanent Magnet Division members and all users of permanent magnet products. The Permanent Magnet Guide and Reference is a supplemental guide to A3’s Standard Specification for Permanent Magnet Materials and serves as a bridge between unit property data and a permanent magnet component having a specific size and geometry in order to establish a magnetic field in a given magnetic circuit environment.

   Order your copy of The Permanent Magnetic Guide and Reference here.

3. Grab Your Glasses – This One’s 3D!

   July 1, 2022 2:49 pm Leave a Comment

   Did you know that Adams Magnetic Products utilizes 3D printing to improve our quality control,  R&D, and magnet production processes? Our 3D printers save our customers time and money by enabling us to create custom magnets and supporting parts on-demand, including rapid prototypes, proof of concept mockups, and customer samples.

   Having complete control of this additive process in house, we can make adjustments on the fly without waiting for expensive iterations to be built, shipped, and tested. This capability gives Adams a unique ability to create completely customized magnet solutions quickly and cost-effectively. And, with the ability to print in a wide range of materials, including GF/CF reinforced nylon, TPU rubber, ABS, and polycarbonate we can select just the right material, optimized for your industry and application.

    

   In addition to saving our customers time and money, and enabling our team to offer creative solutions quickly, our 3D printer has also improved the quality of our product range as a whole. 3D printed magnetizing, inspection, and assembly fixtures allow for a higher degree of repeatability, and consistency, along with overall more efficient and safe production processes.  Sometimes we even share these tools with customers so we can correlate data with identical fixtures.  The possibilities are endless!

   

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

   Give us a call today and let our team of experts and engineers help resolve your next magnet challenge!

4. Leading the Industry in Customer Satisfaction

   March 11, 2022 12:52 pm Leave a Comment

   Adams Magnetic Products leads the magnetic products industry in customer satisfaction.

   How do we know? Like many organizations, we use a customer survey tool called net promoter score, or NPS, to understand our customers’ perceptions. We ask our customers to answer a simple question on a bi-annual basis: “How likely is it that you would recommend Adams Magnetic Products to a friend or colleague?” responding with a rating between 1 and 10. Our NPS score is then calculated by subtracting the percent of respondents who ranked us between 0- 5 (called detractors) from the percent who ranked us 9 or 10 (called promoters). The resulting score can range from -100 to +100

   While a score of +100 is a nearly impossible achievement for any organization, Adams’ quarterly NPS scores are consistently above 90, a ranking considered “world-class” by NPS. You might call us the Nordstrom of the magnetic industry, except that our scores are even higher than theirs.

   We also provide an opportunity for customers to add comments. Recent NPS customer comments include:

   “Great service!”

   “I have dozens of vendors, and Adams is the top one for making purchasing and replenishment easy.”

   “Very satisfied with product and service.”

   “Customer service is excellent.”

   Why are our customers so happy? Because we have the right products available at the right times, eliminating frustrating supply chain interruptions. With more than 1 million magnets in stock, including the original round base magnet developed by Adams, we have the most extensive on-demand inventory in the country. Our strategically located redundant domestic facilities, consignment inventory options, and integrated systems (including ERP and ISO) exist to ensure our customers’ business continuity, something they value considerably given today’s supply chain difficulties, natural disasters, and other situations impacting availability.

   Our happy customers represent a vast array of industries. In fact, Adams serves the largest range of industries and applications of our competitors. We also serve more Fortune 500 companies than any of our competitors. This is because we have more combined magnet knowledge and experience than our competitors. Our unparalleled prototyping capabilities and vastly experienced product application team mean we’re better – and faster – at understanding our customers’ requirements and translating them into high-quality, manufacturable magnets and assembles. As a result, we’re proud to offer the fastest new product response times in the industry.

   Don’t believe us? Just ask some of the more than 100,000 satisfied customers who have purchased more than 1 billion magnets from Adams over the last 70 years.

5. Measuring Remanence and Coercivity with a Hysteresisgraph

   February 18, 2022 2:36 pm Leave a Comment

   When you come right down to it, permanent magnets have two major features:

   1. They produce magnetic fields
   2. They resist demagnetization

   As with any technology that’s been around for a while, the industry has specific terms to describe these features: Remanence and Coercivity.

   

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

   Remanence tells the user how much output a magnet material grade can produce, depending on volume, shape, temperature, and other factors. A steel nail can produce a lot of magnetic output, but it needs an energized coil around it to produce that field. Once the electricity to the coil is turned off, it stops producing a magnetic field. A permanent magnet can also produce a lot of magnetic output, but it does it without an energized coil.

   • Remanence for steel in a nail: Up to 20,000 Gauss (2 Tesla)
   • Remanence for a Rare Earth magnet: Up to 14,500 Gauss (1.45 Tesla)

   Coercivity tells the user how hard it can be to demagnetize or weaken a magnet material, also depending on volume, shape, temperature, and other factors. The higher the coercivity, the harder it is to demagnetize. The steel nail from the previous example is easy to demagnetize, so easy it is effectively demagnetized when the electricity to the coil is turned off. By contrast, a Rare Earth Permanent magnet is extremely difficult to demagnetize.

   • Coercivity for steel in a nail: Up to 1 Oersted (80 kiloAmpere/meter)
   • Coercivity for a Rare Earth magnet: Up to 40,000 Oersteds (3,184 kiloAmpere/meters)

   The vast majority of magnet test equipment focuses on measuring the first feature, the magnetic output of a permanent magnet or permanent magnet assembly. However, only one instrument can measure both the Remanence and the Coercivity of a material: The Hysteresisgraph.

   With a suitably sized test specimen, generally the size of a sugar cube, the hysteresisgraph magnetizes and demagnetizes the material, accurately measuring the Remanence and Coercivity. This is crucial if your magnetic device is going to operate in an environment with demagnetizing fields. One needs to be certain the material will have enough demagnetization resistance for the job.

   

   Adams has hysteresisgraph equipment at each of our manufacturing facilities and is constantly used to verify material properties.

   Any questions?  If so, please contact us.  We’re here to help!

6. What is the MAGNETIC MOMENT?

   August 6, 2021 5:40 pm Leave a Comment

   The magnetic moment is a property that we use to verify the quality of our magnets. It is a way to measure the strength of a magnet and is widely used throughout the industry. Moreover, it is an easy, quick, and repeatable measurement.

   The magnet grade and magnet volume define the magnetic moment. Testing for it confirms:

   1. the correct magnet grade was chosen,
   2. the magnet has the correct dimensions & orientation, and
   3. the magnet was fully and properly magnetized.

   The magnetic moment is a measurement of the overall magnetic output of a magnet. Many illustrations of magnets show ‘lines of flux’ going from one magnetic pole to the other:

   

   Magnetic lines of flux from a cylinder-shaped magnet

   So, the magnetic moment is the summation of all those lines. Assuming the magnet is fully and properly magnetized, the two main factors determining the magnetic moment are the Type/Grade of magnet material and the Volume of a magnet.

   • The stronger the magnet grade, the larger the magnetic moment
   • The larger the magnet volume, the larger the magnetic moment

   As a rough approximation, the four major types of permanent magnet material can be ranked lowest to strongest:

   1. Hard ferrite/Ceramic
   2. Alnico
   3. Samarium Cobalt
   4. Neodymium Iron Boron

   For the same size magnet, here is an illustration depicting the relative magnetic lines of flux:

   

   In conclusion, here are some examples:

   • The Earth’s magnetic moment is 8 x 10 ²² Ampere-meter²
   • A bowling ball made of Neodymium Iron Boron (strongest grade) would have a magnetic moment of 5937 Ampere-meter²
   • A Neodymium Iron Boron (strongest grade) disc the same size as a US Penny would have a magnetic moment of 0.4824 Ampere-meter ²
   • A Neodymium Iron Boron disc in a typical mobile phone has a magnetic moment of 0.007909 Ampere-meter²

    

7. Is it time to embrace chaos in the supply chain?

   July 7, 2021 4:20 pm Leave a Comment

   It wasn’t easy to come up with a proper headline for this story.  So many came to mind, like Woe Woe Woe our Boat, Whack-a-Mole Magnet Market, Endangered Magnets, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and even: Christmas is at risk!

   We’ve endured a lot over the past 18 months:

   • Tariffs
   • COVID (quarantines, lockdowns, labor shortages, etc.)
   • Freight disruptions (Ever Given/Evergreen, please say no more)
   • Ongoing driver and chassis shortages contributing to container shortages
   • The aftermath of the power outage in TX
   • Raw materials shortages
   • Ransomware attacks
   • Raw materials price increases
   • Bidding wars on critical components of magnet manufacturing
   • General labor shortages in-house and throughout the supply chain

   How  we’re handling it:

   We’ve worked hard to mitigate the effects and minimize the passing along of additional costs and paid freight premiums to offset increasing lead times. We’ve worked overtime, negotiated with suppliers, asked everyone to fall in line so we might please regain the stability we rely on to best serve our customers. However, shortages of chemicals, shipping containers, lumber for pallets and crates, and other consumables contribute to the current chaos in the supply chain.  All indications suggest that the container shortage will last into 2022. We appreciate that we are not alone facing these challenges, and many of you have shared similar experiences.

   To share a few specific instances:

   • One of our containers unloaded in California on April 22^nd and finally made it to Chicago on May 28^th. As of this writing (July 7^th), it is still sitting in a staging yard in Chicago waiting for a chassis to transport it to our warehouse in Elmhurst. It’s less than 30 miles away and yet so far out of reach.
   • Another container of goods that we were lucky enough to receive on time arrived this week.  However, the freight charges totaled four times that of our previous delivery of the same product from the same origin.
   • One of our factories is struggling to acquire the iron oxide we use in ceramic magnets because the price of iron ore is so high that steel companies are recycling it rather than selling it to magnet factories.  And when we can buy it, we often have to bid against other factories and pay cash upfront. It’s unprecedented! And it’s significantly driving up the cost of our products even before final shipping.
   • Currently, the cost of Strontium Carbonate is five times higher than it was last year.

   So, while we all try to remember that this too shall pass, we thought we’d share some of the details contributing to the current market challenges and let you know that we’ll further embrace the chaos because the alternative is not an option.

    

8. Measuring Permanent Magnet Characteristics with a Helmholtz Coil and Fluxmeter

   April 22, 2021 1:51 pm Leave a Comment

   Magnetic fields are invisible, so there is no way to tell if a magnet is good or bad just by looking at it. There are a variety of tools for testing available, but one of the simplest and most popular is a Helmholtz coil. Connected to a  fluxmeter,  you can use it to measure the magnetic moment or dipole moment of permanent magnets.

   How it works:

   A Helmholtz coil captures the magnetic field lines from a magnet, similar to how a butterfly net is used.

   Just about any wire wrapped as a coil can be used to capture and measure the fields produced by a magnet, but to maximize sensitivity and usability, a special arrangement of two works best:

   

   Photo credit: Lakeshore

   

   Photo credit: Magnet Physik

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

   This arrangement was first mathematically described by the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, and the coil arrangement has been named in his honor. A Helmholtz coil contains two identical magnetic coils that are placed concentric along a common axis. There is one coil on each side of the experimental area where each sample magnet is placed. The amount of magnetic field lines produced and captured by the Helmholtz coil is directly proportional to the strength of the sample magnet. Since the volume and the material are fixed properties, capturing the magnetic field lines tells one if the magnet is properly magnetized.

   How to use it:

   For a Helmholtz coil measurement, the coil must be minimum of three times larger than the magnet. The coil is connected to a fluxmeter. The magnet is placed in the center of the coil, the fluxmeter is zeroed out, and the magnet is pulled straight out of the coil. The fluxmeter displays how many of the magnetic field lines were captured by the coil. Generally, a minimum acceptable value is calculated beforehand.

   Consistency and speed:

   One of the many advantages of the Helmholtz coil measurement is its tolerance for variability. User A will obtain virtually the same readings as User B or User C. Once setup is complete, the measurement only takes a few seconds, lending itself to use in a high quantity production environment.

   Further reading:

   For more information about measuring magnet characteristics, check out our blog covering How to Measure a Magnets Strength, How a Gaussmeter Works, & How to Optimize Results, or our post about testing the angular direction (ϕ, θ) of magnetization using our m-axis testing equipment. And be sure to think of Adams for everything magnetic!