Magnet Applications partners with Oak Ridge National Lab

Magnet Applications Inc., Dubois, Pennsylvania, a North American manufacturer of compression-bonded magnets and injection-molded magnets, hybrid magnets and magnetic assemblies, has announced that its engineers have worked with researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to prove that permanent neodymium iron boron (NdFeB) magnets produced by additive manufacturing (commonly referred to a “3D printing”) outperform bonded magnets made by traditional methods while also generating less waste.

Magnet Applications, a Newton, Kansas-based Bunting Magnetics company, manufactured the starting composite pellets with 65 volume percent isotropic NdFeB powder and 35 percent polyamide nylon-12 binder in a precise ratio, blended to a consistent texture, the company says. The 3D printing was performed at the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) at ORNL with the Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM system). Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a Tennessee-based science and technology laboratory managed by the United States Department of Energy. The complete study is published in Scientific Reports at www.nature.com/articles/srep36212.   

NdFeB magnets are used in robotics, wind turbines, electric vehicles, cellphones, electric motors and other consumer and industrial equipment.

“Additive manufacturing in magnets provides multiple benefits,” says Dr. John Ormerod, senior technical advisor, Magnet Applications. “They have more design flexibility, which is especially beneficial in sensor technology, and it creates less waste than in the traditional sintering process.”

He continues, “With rapidly advancing technologies, the ability to manufacture the strongest magnet available in any shape without tooling, in any quantity, unleashes so many design opportunities. The work has demonstrated the potential of additive manufacturing to be applied to wide range of magnetic materials and assemblies.

“Magnet Applications and many of our customers are excited to explore the commercial impact of this technology in the future,” Ormerod says.

Further research will include printing magnets in various strengths with preferred direction of magnetization, Magnet Applications says.

Contributing to the project were Ling Li, Angelica Tirado, Orlando Rios, Brian Post, Vlastimil Kunc, R. R. Lowden and Edgar Lara-Curzio at ORNL, as well as researchers I. C. Nlebedim and Thomas Lograsso, working with Critical Materials Institute at Ames Laboratory, Ames, Iowa. Robert Fredette and John Ormerod from Magnet Applications contributed to the project through an MDF technology collaboration. The DOE’s Advanced Manufacturing Office provides support for ORNL’s MDF, a public-private partnership to engage industry with national labs.