Author Archives | Gareth Hatch
Gareth Hatch - who has written 65 posts on Terra Magnetica.
Gareth is a Founding Principal at Technology Metals Research, LLC. He has expertise in a variety of magnetic materials, devices and applications, and their associated trends and challenges, particularly for renewable energy production. For more information check out his biography page. Don't forget to check out Terra Magnetica at Twitter too.
Europe Beckons: The Rare Earth Permanent Magnet Workshop in Slovenia
Later this week I’ll be flying out to Europe, ahead of the 21st International Workshop on Rare Earth Permanent Magnets and their Applications – also known as REPM’10 or simply “The Workshop” within the magnet industry. This Workshop will be held on the shores of the picturesque Lake Bled in Slovenia, and is the latest in [...]
Continue reading...Siemens Launches Permanent Magnet-Based Gearless Wind Turbine
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Progress in the development of commercially-viable direct drive wind turbines took a significant step forward last week, with the official launch by Siemens Energy of its SWT-3.0-101 wind turbine. This turbine has a faceplate rating of 3 MW, has no gearbox and uses a permanent magnet generator to produce electricity. What’s really interesting about this system [...]
Continue reading...Recent Developments in Permanent Magnet Gear Systems & Machines
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Last month I attended the Magnetics 2010 Conference in Florida, where a variety of speakers gave updates on the business and technical side of the magnetics industry. One of these days I’ll actually write up my thoughts on the conference itself, probably in conjunction with my RareMetalBlog parter in crime, Ian London. In the meantime, [...]
Continue reading...The Concerted European Action On Magnets: A Model For Facing The Rare Earths Challenge?
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
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 [...]
Continue reading...Magnetic Tape Gets A Boost
Monday, January 25, 2010
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 [...]
Continue reading...More News On Correlated Magnetics
Thursday, January 14, 2010
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 [...]
Continue reading...Upcoming Magnetics Training Events In The USA
Saturday, January 9, 2010
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 [...]
Continue reading...USA Reclaims World Record For Highest Field Resistive Electromagnet
Friday, January 8, 2010
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 [...]
Continue reading...Making Magnetic Paper
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
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 [...]
Continue reading...Magnets, Algae and Biofuels
Sunday, December 13, 2009
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 [...]
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010
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