Magnequench & Rare Earth Permanent Magnets - Dr. John J. Croat @ TEAC8

R-Fe based permanent magnets were being researched by Dr. Croat while working for General Motors Magnetic Materials Group (GM Research Labs). Automobiles are the largest users of pernament magnets, and in 1970, GM was the largest producer of automobiles.

In 1973, the first OPEC oil embargo sent the cost of gasoline soaring. Denser, more powerful magnets were a means of reducing the weight (increase fuel efficiency) of automobiles.

The mission of Magnetic Materials Group: Develop a lower cost, high performance rare earth-iron permanent magnets, that did not depend on expensive elements like cobalt.

Dr. Croat pursued metastable, magnetically hard Nd-Fe and Pr-Fe using the melt spinning process. Discovered that magnetically hard metastable phases readily formed in all of the R-Fe binary alloys when melt spun over a range of quench rate.

The newly discovered Nd2Fe14B Intermetallic Compound would become basis of all NdFeB permanent magnets.

General Motors founded Magnequench at Delco Remy, Anderson, Indiana in 1986.

Commercial development of bonded Nd magnets coincided with early development of personal computer and related office automation equipment (printers, scanners, fax machines).

However, in 1995, GM suddenly announced that they were selling Magnequench because it was not core to the automobile business.

The business was eventually sold to a group of investors which included elements of the Chinese government. Entire business and technology was transferred by the new owners to a new factory in Tianjin, China in 2001.

These events are covered in "Sellout" a book by Victoria Bruce. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1632862581/?linkCode=as2&tag=thorium-remix-20&linkId=83be724d604f317720b81d0a26a477fb

Presented at TEAC8 ( Thorium Energy Alliance Conference #8 ) on 2017-08-21 ( August 21st, 2017 ). http://ThoriumEnergyAlliance.com/

Edited by Gordon McDowell and captured for use in future Thorium Remix iterations. http://ThoriumRemix.com/

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