Author Archives: amartin

1. 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!

2. 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

    

3. 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.

    

4. 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!