NdFeB Powder Production for Sintered PM-Wire Permanent Magnets

There is a critical need for manufacturing capabilities of high-performance permanent magnets in the U.S. for defense applications. Several rare earth material mining 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 very little production capability for NdFeB permanent magnets in the U.S.; the current manufacturing process of sintered permanent magnets is very labor intensive and requires over 50 steps restricting cost effective production to countries with inexpensive labor. Once domestic supply of NdPr becomes available in the U.S., only an innovative manufacturing process for permanent magnets with a high level of automation can be viable and produce cost competitive magnets. AML has developed a novel manufacturing process called PM-Wire™ allowing for fully automated cost-effective production of permanent magnets that will bring permanent magnet manufacturing back to the U.S.. AML’s PM-Wire™ is a novel manufacturing process for permanent magnets based on a powder-in-tube process.  The PM-Wire manufacturing process has been fully implemented and validated for both anisotropic bonded and sintered magnets. While PM-Wire magnets based on anisotropic bonded powder are ready for mass manufacturing using commercially available powder, the powder needed to manufacture sintered magnets has no commercial availability. The current Phase 1 project deals with the production of sintered NdFeB permanent magnets made using AML’s PM-Wire manufacturing process. During Phase 1, the raw material is supplied by a US national laboratory small quantities of powder. The very limited availability of NdFeB powder presents a challenge to AML’s development and commercialization of sintered permanent magnets.  As part of the proposed Phase 2 project, we propose to address the limited powder availability by acquiring and implementing the capability to produce high grade powder from NdFeB flakes at AML.