Ph. Masson, R. Chaudhary, J. Lammers, R. Dubord, W. Hinson, M. Senti
Advanced Magnet Lab,
United States
Keywords: permanent magnets, magnet manufacturing, ndfeb, manufacturing process
Summary:
There is a critical need for manufacturing capabilities of high-performance permanent magnets in the U.S. Several rare earth material mining and magnet recycling ventures are under development in the U.S. and domestic extraction of raw materials for permanent magnets will become available in the coming years. However, currently, there is minimal production capability for NdFeB permanent magnets in the U.S.; the manufacturing process of sintered permanent magnets is very labor intensive, has poor yield with magnets difficult to assemble into products such as motors and generators. Once a domestic supply of NdPr becomes available in the US, only an innovative, high-rate, high-yield, manufacturing process can be viable for a sustainalbe magnet manufacturing venture in the U.S. AML has developed PM-Wire™. PM-Wire™ enables the manufacturing of permanent magnets at high volume, high yield, low cost and with better flexibility in shapes and magnetization direction as compared to conventionally manufactured magnets that currently are produced almost entirely in China. In addition, PM-Wire™ enables the use of lower cost rare earth and non rare earth materials, while improving the performance and lowering the cost of the end-use products such as motors. This innovation represents a significant step in the direction of securing domestic supply chains for advanced technologies.PM-Wire™ also enables new and lower cost magnet material compositions. The PM-Wire™ process allows for unmatched flexibility in terms of the pre-alignment and magnetization directions as well as the shape of the produced magnets from straight to curved, rings or even helical magnets. This flexibility opens the design space for devices using permanent magnets such as motors and generators and leads to novel configurations with significant improvements in performance and production cost and ease of assembly into magnet-based products. The PM-Wire™ manufacturing process has been fully implemented and validated for both anisotropic bonded and sintered magnets. The presentation/paper will describe the manufacturing process, highlighting the flexibility in the magnetization direction and magnet shapes, and will present examples of manufactured magnets. Examples of applications benefiting from the flexibility of PM-Wire™ magnets will also be presented.