One of the first objects to arouse mankind's curiosity about electrical energy — the magnet — continues to be at the heart of the most advanced electrical devices. And one Landisville manufacturer is right there too.
"If you've had a knee or hip [replacement], the chances are very high that the motors used in the [surgical] hand tools had magnets from Electron Energy Corp.," said Peter Dent, the company's vice president of business development.
The company's magnets are also in the instruments that guide the space shuttle during its launch, and in the radar and control systems of fighter jets and submarines.
Many of the traveling-wave tubes that amplify the microwave signals transmitted by communications satellites are equipped with Electron Energy magnets, as is the ion-thrust propulsion system in NASA's Deep Space I probe.
"We've actually got a lot of product circulating around out of this world," Dent said.
One key to these diverse applications is the use of samarium cobalt alloys, which allows Electron Energy's magnets to retain their strong magnetic fields at temperatures up to about 1,000 F.
That enables the magnets to be used in motors, generators and other devices subjected to the intense heat of everything from sterilizing autoclaves to jet engines to outer space.
The company was one of the first to manufacture high-strength samarium cobalt magnets when they were introduced back in the 1970s, and is the only one still doing so in the United States, Dent said.
It makes its own alloys from the base metals and handles all the manufacturing steps along the way, often including the assemblies that hold the magnets.
It also assists its clients in designing devices using samarium cobalt and other rare-earth magnets, and it does research to develop new types of magnets and new ways to use them.
"Rare-earth magnets are really an enabling technology," said Michael Walmer, Electron Energy's president.
The miniaturization of everything from computers to spacecraft has become possible by the development of higher-strength magnets, an effort that Electron Energy continues to pursue using grants from a number of government agencies.
In the labElectron Energy's most recent research grant of $500,000 was awarded in February by the National Science Foundation for a two-year project to develop a magnet using composite layers on a microscopic, or nano, level with a potential to double the strength of the material's magnetic field.
"Theoretically, it can be done, but no one has figured out a practical way to get the energy predicted," said Jinfang Liu, the company's vice president of technology and engineering.
The company is also working on a project through a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to reduce the eddy-current losses in electrical motors. This has the potential to increase the efficiency of hybrid cars and has been promising enough to prompt an order for samples of the material, Liu said.
"In the end, it's about more energy efficiency," Dent said. "It's helping it to be a greener world by being more electric."
Yet another research project, through a $600,000 grant from NASA, has been the development of parts for a generator that could become part of a lunar station whenever the U.S. space program returns to the moon.
The company has several other smaller government research projects, Dent said, including a magnetic refrigerator for the Air Force that would use water as the heat transfer medium instead of environmentally harmful chlorofluorocarbons.
By continuing to work on research and development projects, the company is able to keep an open mind about all the possibilities for new products it might help design and manufacture, Liu said.
"We're interested in all related technology," he said.
As the only remaining U.S. company manufacturing these kinds of magnets, it's important for Electron Energy to stay on the leading edge of research, Liu said.
Such innovation is vital for the country's defense, Dent said.
"It's very strategically important that people here can supply the material, as opposed to buying the material somewhere in Asia or elsewhere," he said.
Start to finishElectron Energy's magnets start out as barrels of pure metal chips.
Some of the metals are expensive, but they are not rare, Liu said, explaining that rare earth is simply a term applied to a series of the heavier atoms on the periodic table of elements, such as samarium.
These particular elements lend themselves to the manufacture of permanent magnets because of their high order of structural alignment.
The alloys used in Electron Energy's magnets include iron, copper and zirconium in addition to samarium and cobalt.
The metals are melted in a high-heat vacuum furnace, and the resulting alloy is broken up and crushed into particles about the size of sand.
The alloys are then ground to a talclike consistency in milling machines, down to the level of single crystals with single magnetic domains.
The isopropyl alcohol used in some of the milling machines and the metallic powder itself are highly flammable, requiring special tools such as $700 spark-free crescent wrenches and containment areas where the powders are dried in an environment of argon and nitrogen gases.
Enough of the powder is held in storage to meet periods of peak demand.
"We have lots and lots of different grades," Dent said. "We probably have the largest offering of samarium cobalt material in the world."
The powders are put into molds and pressed into the desired shapes under a magnetic field to align the metallic crystals.
The pressings are then sintered, a process that increases their density and strength by heating them in furnaces up to 2,000 F.
"A lot of the magic in getting the magnetic properties just right occurs here," Dent said.
The sintered magnets are machined to size, which in some cases involves cutting them out of larger blocks.
The finished magnets are then subjected to a quick pulse in a high magnetic field to make their magnetic properties permanent.
The wire-fed electrical discharge machine used for the cutting is also used to make tools for other parts of the plant and to make some of the parts for magnet assemblies.
Those assemblies may hold as many as 600 individual magnets.
Some of the magnets the company works with are made of neodymium iron boron, a rare-earth alloy that Electron Energy buys from other producers. That alloy has higher magnetic energy but lower heat tolerances than samarium cobalt, making it more suitable for a variety of applications.
A constant pullElectron Energy got its start back in 1970 shortly after samarium cobalt magnets were first developed.
The company's founder, Marlin Walmer, was a metallurgical engineer who developed a process to produce the platinum cobalt magnets that were key to the invention of the world's first electrical wristwatches for the Hamilton Watch Co, his son Michael Walmer said.
He started Electron Energy in a milk parlor near Manheim with two employees and a license from the Air Force to develop the new samarium cobalt technology based on its patent.
Since then, the company has added a number of its own patents based on its research in magnet technology. Marlin Walmer headed the company until his death in 1999 in a plane crash.
In the industry's heyday, there were about 6,000 employees producing magnets in the U.S., Dent said. Now, the total U.S. employment in magnetics is about 400, and 110 of those people work for Electron Energy.
Companies that once manufactured magnets include Raytheon and General Electric.
Raytheon was once a competitor. Now, it's a customer, Walmer said.
Electron Energy stayed in business by being selective in the markets it served, staying away from the high-volume products used in cars, cell phones and computers, and concentrating on advanced technologies.
"We're not trying to compete with low-cost producers," Liu said. "The technical content is very important for us."
Still, Liu doesn't rule out a major expansion down the road if the company develops a technological breakthrough with accompanying patents that would protect an investment in increased production capacity.
Earlier breakthroughs in the field came in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Liu said.
"Since then we have seen a lot of incremental changes, but there has not been a new generation of rare-earth magnets since the late 1980s," he said.
The research the company is pursuing to develop nanotechnology for the construction of composite magnets could offer that breakthrough and take the miniaturization and efficiency of electrical devices to a new level.
"Everybody else is talking about a recession," Liu said. "We're not in a recession. We're expanding."
Source:
http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/236742
