I know I’ve been rather lax in following up on my last post here, sent just before the Critical & Strategic Metals Conference in Washington DC last week.  It was a most interesting event.  It gave many folks a chance to interact with other parts of the supply chain that they might not have directly [...]

I’m currently in Washington D.C., ahead of a three-day meeting called “Managing Supply Chain Risks for Critical & Strategic Metals”.  This meeting, co-chaired by Jack Lifton of Jack Lifton, LLC, and Lisa Reisman of Aptium Global, will no doubt be an interesting mix of discussions and participants.  It looks to cover rare earth metals, minor metals, platinum [...]

A study on the therapeutic effects of magnetic and copper bracelets was published late this summer in Complementary Therapies in Medicine, and the news of its findings has slowly but surely filtered its way into the mainstream media. Unfortunately for the myriad purveyors of magnetic bracelets, necklaces, rings, insoles and other magnet therapy-related paraphernalia, the [...]

Last week I was in Denmark, and while there I had an opportunity to pay a visit to some wind turbines operated by Aalborg University in Northern Denmark.  Getting to finally see and hear a fully functional 2.3 MW wind turbine “in the flesh” was pretty cool, I have to say. There was a reasonable [...]

I saw an intriguing news item over at the Magnetism & Electromagnetics Interest Group yesterday, and I see that it’s starting to make its way into the press.  The Huntsville Times is reporting that “Larry Fullerton, formerly of Time Domain, has developed a process to ‘program’ magnetic and electromagnetic materials so they will only attract [...]

The SMMA (Motor and Motion Association) Fall Technical Conference takes place Nov 3-5, 2009 in Arlington Heights, Illinois this year.  Dr. Stan Trout of Spontaneous Materials will be giving a half-day pre-conference seminar titled “Permanent Magnets Fundamentals“ in the afternoon of Nov 3.  As I’ve said before, Stan is one of the best instructors I know [...]

Just a reminder folks, that the China Magnetics 2009 conference, organized by IntertechPira and the 8th in the series, takes place October 27-28, 2009 in Shanghai, China. This event brings the permanent magnets supply chain to Shanghai for “an in-depth discussion of recent trends and developments within China’s magnet and magnetic materials industry”. With the media [...]

Okay, okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating just a little… but if the news from Japan today is anything to go by, perhaps we’re not far off. According to a report at TradingMarket.com, Japan’s Daikin Industries has teamed up with Professor Shigeo Morimoto from Osaka Prefecture University, to create an electric motor that produced high torque [...]

Earlier today, the United States Magnet Materials Association [USMMA] announced that Thorium Energy, Inc. has joined its ranks.  Thorium Energy owns rare earth resources in Lemhi Pass, located in Idaho and Montana. According to the USMMA, this move “expands the coalition’s focus on rare earth materials and the rare earth magnet supply chain”. The USMMA [...]

This is the last in a four-part series of articles on the current scrutiny being given to rare earths by the US Congress and US Department of Defense, in the context of national security considerations.  The third part can be accessed here. The full white paper can be downloaded as a PDF file from here. [...]