Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and colleagues have demonstrated that permanent magnets produced by additive manufacturing can outperform bonded magnets made using traditional techniques while conserving critical materials. NdFeB magnets are used in a range of applications from computer hard drives and headphones to clean energy technologies such as electric vehicles and wind turbines. The team fabricated isotropic, near-net-shape, neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) bonded magnets at DOE’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at ORNL using the Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) machine. The result, published in an open-access paper in Scientific Reports , was a product with comparable or better magnetic, mechanical, and microstructural properties than bonded magnets made using traditional injection molding with the same composition. This isotropic, neodymium-iron-boron bonded permanent magnet was 3D-printed at DOE’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Click to enlarge. The additive manufacturing process began with composite pellets consisting […]