Functionalizing magnet additive manufacturing with in-situ magnetic field source

Abhishek Sarkar, M. A. Somashekara, M. Parans Paranthaman, Matthew Kramer, Christopher Haase, Ikenna C. Nlebedim

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

25 Scopus citations

Abstract

Additive manufacturing via 3-D printing technologies have become a frontier in materials research, including its application in the development and recycling of permanent magnets. This work addresses the opportunity to integrate magnetic field sources into 3-D printing process in order to enable printing, alignment of anisotropic permanent magnets or magnetizing of magnetic filler materials, without requiring further processing. A non-axisymmetric electromagnet-type field source architecture was designed, modelled, constructed, installed to a fused filament commercial 3-D printer, and tested. The testing was performed by applying magnetic field while printing composite anisotropic Nd-Fe-B + Sm-Fe-N powders bonded in Nylon12 (65 vol.%) and recycled Sm-Co powder bonded in PLA (15 vol.%). Magnetic characterization indicated that the degree-of-alignment of the magnet powders increased both with alignment field strength (controlled by the electric current applied to the magnetizing system) and the printing temperature. Both coercivity and remanence were found to be strongly dependent on the degree-of-alignment, except for printing performed below but near the Curie temperature of Nd-Fe-B (310 ° C). At applied field of 0.15 kOe, Sm-Co and hybrid Nd-Fe-B/Sm-Fe-N printed samples showed degrees-of-alignment of 83 % and 65 %, respectively. The variations in coercivity were consistent with previous observations in bonded magnet materials. This work verifies that integration of magnetic field sources into 3-D printing processes will result in magnetic alignment of particles while ensuring that other advantages of 3-D printing are retained.

Original languageEnglish
Article number101289
JournalAdditive Manufacturing
Volume34
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2020

Funding

This work is supported by the Critical Materials Institute (CMI), an Energy Innovation Hub funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Advanced Manufacturing Office . Ames Laboratory is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by Iowa State University of Science and Technology under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11358. Authors are thankful to Electron Energy Corporation for providing the Sm-Co grinding swarfs used for this work. Authors also appreciate Dr. Thomas Lograsso for his guidance during the conceptualization of this work. This work is supported by the Critical Materials Institute (CMI), an Energy Innovation Hub funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Advanced Manufacturing Office. Ames Laboratory is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by Iowa State University of Science and Technology under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11358. Authors are thankful to Electron Energy Corporation for providing the Sm-Co grinding swarfs used for this work. Authors also appreciate Dr. Thomas Lograsso for his guidance during the conceptualization of this work.

Keywords

  • 3-D printing
  • Bonded magnets
  • In-situ alignment
  • Magnetic material recycling

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