Terra Magnetica

In 1984, the magnetic materials research community in Europe was at a formidable crossroads. The latter part of 1983 had seen industrial research groups in the USA and Japan simultaneously announce the discovery of a promising new permanent magnet material, based on the neodymium-iron-boron [Nd-Fe-B] alloy system. This long-sought successor to the ever more expensive [...]

Earlier this week, MIT’s Technology Review published a story on a new magnetic tape material which, combined with a novel tape-reading technology, can produce data storage capacities of 35 Tb per cartridge – over 40 times higher than current tape storage systems.
The research was conducted at IBM’S Zurich Research Labs in Switzerland, in conjunction with [...]

You may recall an article I wrote late last year on Correlated Magnetics Research, a company from Alabama who has created and produced what they were calling “programmable” magnets.
Since then, I’ve had the chance to play with a number of their prototypes.  I had initially been a little confused as to what the technology was [...]

There are a couple of training events coming up in the next month or so, which anyone interested in learning more about the technical aspects of permanent magnets, magnetizing and testing might be interested in attending.
The first takes places on the day before the Magnetics Conference in Orlando, Florida, and is being run by Dr. [...]

The engineers and scientists at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory [NHMFL] in Florida, announced this week that they had successfully tested a new resistive electromagnet that produces a magnetic field strength of 36 tesla (360 kilo-oersted), breaking the old record of 35 tesla (350 kilo-oersted) previously held jointly between the NHMFL and the Grenoble [...]

Hello folks – Happy New Year! My apologies for the long delay in posting a new article here at Terra Magnetica – let me get things back on track with some news from R & D Magazine, on a new paper-based magnetic material that may have potential for low cost fabrication applications.
A team of researchers [...]

Siemens reported recently on an interesting use of magnets for the harvesting of fast-growing algae that will eventually be turned into biofuels.
The use of algae as a potential source of fuels is nothing new within the world of renewable energy. As Siemens says:
Algae are a valuable source of raw material. For millions of years throughout [...]

I’ve just finished writing up a new article over at Rare MetalBlog titled “Chinese Rare Earth Production: A Darker Shade of Green?“.  The article discusses a new Sunday Times report on the extensive pollution caused by the mining and production of rare earths in China, and the effects that they’re having on the local people.
It [...]

Earlier today, my colleagues at Dexter Magnetic Technologies announced the launch of an innovative downhole generator tool, which we have developed for some pretty extreme drilling conditions. This new high pressure – high temperature (HPHT) tool could lead the way to drilling deeper and more productive oil, gas and geothermal wells in the world’s most demanding drilling environments.
The tool was [...]