Magnetics Business & Technology - Spring 2012 - (Page 4)

EDITOR’S CHOICE Great Western Minerals Group's LCM Successfully Completes First Pour with New Rare Earth Furnace Great Western Minerals Group Ltd. (GWMG) has announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Less Common Metals (LCM), has successfully carried out the first full-scale melt with LCM’s newly acquired furnace. The first pour was undertaken on Friday, January 27, 2012 at LCM’s new plant located in Hooton Park in Birkenhead, UK. The installation of the new furnace, which began in November, 2011 and was completed by mid-January, 2012, was undertaken by a team comprised of engineers from the furnace supplier alongside LCM personnel. After extensive testing of the power, water, vacuum and control systems, the furnace was approved to commence melting trials of Neodymium-IronBoron alloys for permanent magnet applications. The subsequent trials, which continued into February, will focus on the production of alloys that fully conform to detailed customer specifications. GWMG president and CEO Jim Engdahl said, “The success of the first round of testing with LCM’s new furnace speaks highly of the level of expertise that resides within the team at LCM. The first pour with the new furnace is a significant step forward in the continued advancement of our “mines to markets” strategy as it increases our alloy production capacity by almost 50 percent. The newly acquired furnace positions our company to further satisfy the requirements of our global customer base and, in the process, solidify the position of GWMG as a pre-eminent global supplier of rare earth products.” Low-Loss Inductors for Solar Power Inverters SMP has released chokes for solar power inverters. Compact and low-loss with low stray fields, the chokes facilitate outstanding inverter efficiency. The chokes’ cores consist of powder composites with low magnetostriction, which SMP specifically engineers for each application. With the low eddy current and hysteresis losses of these materials, the chokes allow the construction of efficient inverters. Their encapsulated design ensures that they emit only low-intensity stray fields, so that they do not affect other components within the inverter. Compact choke design is another important aspect: SMP’s chokes occupy 25 percent less space than conventional designs. Extremely quiet in operation, inverters with these chokes can also be used in residential areas. SMP chokes can be produced for frequencies of up to 200 kHz and currents of up to 1,000 amperes. Their sizes range from 36 mm to 300 mm diameter and their weight from 50 g to 130 kg. Depending on their application, degrees of protections from IP00 to IP66 are available. The chokes can be used in a temperature range up to 180°C. All components are RoHS- and REACH-com- pliant and the materials used are UL-listed. Beside solar power inverters, SMP’s inductive components are used in transformers for wind turbines, in railway engineering and medical engineering as well as in drives and power electronics. Epson Atmix to Triple Superfine Alloy Powder Production Capacity with New Plant Seiko Epson Corp. (Epson) has announced that Group company Epson Atmix Corp. will invest $41.6 million in a new plant at the Hachinohe Kita-Inter Industrial Park in Aomori Prefecture, Japan. The new plant will approximately triple Atmix’s current production capacity in water-atomized superfine alloy powder, enabling it to meet expanding demand from growing markets for goods such as smartphones and other high-performance mobile devices, automobiles and medical equipment. To accommodate these expanding markets, Epson Atmix will invest in the new plant, which will increase Atmix’s magnetic powder and MIM powder production capacity to approximately 10,000 tons per year, or about triple its current capacity. The company plans to break ground on the new facility in the first half of fiscal 2012 and begin operations in the second half of 2013. Epson Atmix is a customer-focused company that is committed to leveraging its unique metalpowder manufacturing technology to continue to create customer-pleasing, trusted products and services of the highest quality. 4 Magnetics Business & Technology • Spring 2012 www.MagneticsMagazine.com http://www.MagneticsMagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Magnetics Business & Technology - Spring 2012

Magnetics Business & Technology - Spring 2012
Editor’s Choice
Ten Steps for Developing the Kipawa Heavy Rare Earth Deposit
Designing New Magnet Technology - A Multiphysics Challenge
Magnets • Materials • Measurement
Four-Pole Technique for EMI Filter Design
Application • Component Developments
Research & Development
Industry News
Marketplace
Spontaneous Thoughts: The Golden Rule for Writers

Magnetics Business & Technology - Spring 2012