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Magnetics

The companies that define the magnetics industry, each read on the same nine-check website rubric — a 0–100 score with the exact fixes — alongside the concepts, the developments and the questions that shape the field.

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The companies

67 companies in the magnetics industry, each graded on the nine things that decide whether a buyer or an AI assistant can find and trust them online. Open any name for the full write-up and the specific fixes.

70+ solid   45–69 gaps   under 45 costing customers

Sites we couldn’t reach

22 businesses whose website blocked our scanner — common when a site filters datacenter traffic, and not a sign the site is broken. A blocked site is never scored zero.

Who defines the magnetics market

The firms, funds and institutions that set the terms in magnetics — context, not local listings; never scored.

Magnetics guides

Concepts

Coded (programmable) magnet

A magnet whose face is printed with a designed pattern of magnetic regions, giving it engineered behavior.

Maxel

A 'magnetic pixel' — one of the many small magnetic regions printed across a coded magnet's face.

Polymagnet

The programmable-magnet product/technology pioneered by Correlated Magnetics Research (CMR).

Magnetic viewing film

Hi-res film that reveals a magnet's coded pole pattern in visible color.

Near-field vs far-field

Coded patterns tune where a magnet grips (near) vs repels/springs (far).

Countersunk mounting

M4/#6 CTSK holes let coded pairs bolt into real assemblies.

Roll-up / consolidation

Acquiring several small players in a fragmented market and unifying them into one operation.

Fragmented market

Many small independent players, no dominant share — the precondition for a roll-up.

NdFeB (neodymium)

Neodymium-iron-boron - the strongest commercial permanent magnet and the workhorse of modern motors and devices.

SmCo (samarium cobalt)

Weaker than NdFeB but far more heat- and corrosion-resistant; chosen for aerospace, defense and high-temperature use.

Ferrite / ceramic magnet

Low-cost, corrosion-resistant and weak - the highest-volume magnet by count, common in speakers and holding applications.

AlNiCo

Aluminium-nickel-cobalt: excellent temperature stability but easily demagnetized; used in sensors, instruments and guitar pickups.

N-grade (N35-N52)

The NdFeB strength grade - the number tracks maximum energy product, so N52 is the strongest common grade.

Remanence (Br)

The flux density a magnet retains on its own - effectively how strong the magnet is.

Coercivity (Hci)

How strongly a magnet resists being demagnetized by heat or an opposing field.

Maximum energy product (BHmax)

The headline figure of merit for magnet strength, quoted in MGOe - the number grades are named for.

Curie temperature

The temperature at which a magnet loses its magnetism entirely; the practical max working temperature is well below it.

Sintered vs bonded

Sintered magnets are pressed and fired for maximum strength; bonded magnets are moulded with a polymer, allowing complex multipole shapes at lower strength.

Anisotropic vs isotropic

Anisotropic magnets are oriented during pressing and are far stronger along one axis; isotropic can be magnetized in any direction - which is what makes flexible multipole patterns possible.

Halbach array

An arrangement of magnets whose rotating orientation concentrates flux on one face and nearly cancels it on the other.

Multipole magnetization

Writing several alternating north/south poles onto a single magnet - the industrial ancestor of coded magnets.

Magnetizing fixture

The tooled coil that imprints a specific pole pattern; the fixture, not the magnet blank, defines the pattern.

Pulse magnetizer

Capacitor-discharge equipment that dumps a huge current through a fixture to magnetize or pattern a magnet.

Gauss & tesla

Units of magnetic flux density (1 tesla = 10,000 gauss) - what a gaussmeter reads at the magnet's surface.

Pull force

The straight-line force needed to pull a magnet off steel - the spec buyers compare, and the one most often quoted out of context.

Coating (NiCuNi, epoxy, parylene)

NdFeB corrodes, so it is plated or coated; the coating choice governs outdoor and medical suitability.

NdPr oxide

The neodymium-praseodymium oxide (didymium) that is the primary magnet feedstock and the main rare-earth price driver.

Dysprosium & terbium

Heavy rare earths added to raise coercivity so magnets survive heat; the scarcest, most supply-critical inputs.

Mine-to-magnet

A fully integrated domestic chain from ore through separation, alloy and finished magnet - the stated goal of Western supply policy.

Strip casting

Rapidly solidifying molten rare-earth alloy into thin strip - the standard first step in making sintered NdFeB.

Grain boundary diffusion

Diffusing dysprosium or terbium along grain boundaries to raise heat resistance while using far less heavy rare earth.

Magnet recycling

Recovering rare earths (or reprocessing whole magnets) from end-of-life motors and drives, now a real Western feedstock route.

Electropermanent magnet (EPM)

A switchable assembly whose external field can be turned on or off - a different route to a 'programmable' magnet.

Magnetic coupling

Transmitting torque through a sealed wall using magnet arrays instead of a shaft - the basis of leak-free pumps.

Magnetic gear

Contactless gearing via modulated magnet arrays: no teeth, no wear, inherent overload protection.

Pot magnet / magnetic assembly

A magnet in a steel cup or housing that redirects flux to one face, multiplying usable holding force.

Demagnetization curve (second quadrant)

The B-H and J-H curves in the second quadrant, where a permanent magnet actually operates. Hc (normal coercivity) is where flux density reaches zero; Hci (intrinsic coercivity) is where the magnet's own polarization is destroyed - the number that really predicts whether a magnet survives heat and opposing fields.

Permeance coefficient (load line)

The slope of the magnet's operating point, set by its geometry and the circuit around it. A short, wide magnet sits on a low load line and is easy to demagnetize; a long, thin magnet in a closed circuit sits high and is stable. Change the geometry and you change the working strength without changing the grade.

Knee point & irreversible loss

Above a certain temperature the demagnetization curve develops a knee. Push the operating point past it - by heat, an opposing field, or too aggressive a geometry - and the magnet does not recover when it cools: the loss is irreversible and only remagnetization restores it.

Reversible temperature coefficients & maximum operating temperature

Br falls roughly 0.1% per degree C and Hci falls far faster in NdFeB; these are the alpha and beta coefficients on a datasheet. They recover on cooling, which is why maximum operating temperature - which depends on the grade AND the load line - is a far lower and far more useful number than Curie temperature.

Temperature grades (M, H, SH, UH, EH, AH)

The letter suffix after an N-grade rates intrinsic coercivity, not strength: N (no suffix) is the standard room-temperature grade, and M, H, SH, UH, EH and AH step up heat resistance. Higher suffixes historically meant more dysprosium or terbium, so the suffix is also a cost and supply-risk signal.

Easy axis & orientation direction

An anisotropic magnet is pressed in a field so its grains share one preferred magnetic direction. That easy axis is locked in at pressing; the magnet can only be magnetized usefully along it, so orientation direction is a manufacturing decision made long before magnetization.

Magnetic circuit, air gap & back iron

Flux behaves like current in a loop: magnet, steel return path, air gap. The gap dominates the reluctance, so gap size governs usable field far more than grade does; flux that escapes the intended path is leakage and flux that bulges at the gap edges is fringing, and both steal from the working field. Back iron - a steel plate or cup behind the magnet - gives flux a low-reluctance route home and is the cheapest way to raise holding force, which is why the same magnet quoted bare and quoted in an assembly gives wildly different pull numbers. Drive the steel past saturation and the extra flux simply leaks.

Pole pitch, cogging torque & skew

Pole pitch is the arc or distance between adjacent poles. In motors, the interaction between magnet poles and stator slots produces cogging torque - a notchy reluctance ripple - which is suppressed by skewing the magnet or the stack, by pole-arc shaping, or by choosing slot/pole combinations that spread the effect.

Laminations, eddy-current loss & retaining sleeves

Changing fields drive circulating currents in conductive magnets and steel, heating both; laminated stacks and segmented magnets break those loops. In high-speed rotors a carbon-fibre or Inconel retaining sleeve is added because sintered magnet is strong in compression and weak in tension and would otherwise fly apart.

Shear force vs pull force

Catalogue pull force is measured straight-on, on thick clean ground steel, in perfect contact. Slide the joint sideways and the usable shear value is a fraction of it; paint, plating, an air gap, thin or curved steel, and temperature all derate it further. Designing to catalogue pull force is the most common magnet-selection mistake.

Magnetize before vs after assembly

Magnetized parts attract swarf, jump in fixtures and complicate bonding, so assemblies are often built with blanks and magnetized last through a fixture. Magnetize-after gives cleaner assembly and truer multipole registration; magnetize-before is sometimes forced by geometry or by the energy the fixture would need.

UN3506 & shipping magnetized material

Magnetized material is a regulated air cargo hazard because it can deflect aircraft instrumentation. Packages must be shielded and measured so the field stays under the limit at the required distance from the package surface, and declared or certified as non-restricted accordingly - a real cost and lead-time factor on magnet freight.

Coating qualification, tolerance class & edge break

NdFeB rusts, so coatings are qualified by salt-spray hours, adhesion and thermal shock, with NiCuNi for general use, epoxy or zinc for cost, and parylene or full encapsulation for medical and implant-adjacent work. Alongside it sit the boring specs that decide yield: dimensional tolerance class, chamfer and edge break, and whether the coating thickness is inside the tolerance or on top of it.

RoHS, REACH & critical-minerals controls

Magnets carry the usual RoHS and REACH substance declarations, but rare earths now also sit on the US and EU critical-minerals lists, and both magnet materials and magnet-making technology are subject to export licensing. Provenance paperwork has become part of the quote, not an afterthought.

MOQ, tooling/NRE and price per kilogram vs per piece

Magnets are sold on alloy weight plus process, so quotes move between price per kilogram (which tracks the NdPr market) and price per piece (which buries tooling, magnetizing-fixture NRE, coating and QC). Custom shapes and custom pole patterns carry fixture NRE and a minimum order quantity, and long-term supply agreements or allocation are how large buyers hedge both price and availability.

Iron nitride & rare-earth-free magnets

Iron-nitride (Fe16N2) is the most advanced attempt at a magnet with no rare earth at all, commercialized by Niron Magnetics; alongside it sit ferrite substitution, SmCo for heat, and magnet-free motor topologies such as externally excited synchronous machines. None yet matches NdFeB energy product, which is exactly why the substitution question stays open.

Bastnäsite

Bastnäsite is a rare-earth fluorocarbonate mineral that is the dominant ore of the light rare earths neodymium and praseodymium, and it is the principal feedstock mined at Mountain Pass and Bayan Obo.

Monazite

Monazite is a rare-earth phosphate mineral, often recovered as a by-product of mineral-sands mining, that carries neodymium and praseodymium along with naturally occurring thorium, which complicates its handling and licensing.

Ion-adsorption clay

Ion-adsorption clay deposits are weathered clays in which rare earths are loosely bound to clay surfaces, and they are the world's main commercial source of the heavy rare earths dysprosium and terbium.

Solvent extraction (SX)

Solvent extraction is the standard hydrometallurgical process that separates the chemically similar rare earths from one another across many mixer-settler stages, and it is the step where most of the industry's cost and know-how sit.

Rare-earth metal reduction (molten-salt electrolysis)

Rare-earth metal reduction converts separated rare-earth oxide into metal, typically by molten-salt electrolysis or metallothermic reduction, and it is the bridge between an oxide refinery and an alloy maker.

Mischmetal

Mischmetal is an unseparated alloy of mixed rare-earth metals, historically used in lighter flints, that represents rare earths in the form they take before the expensive separation into individual elements.

Nd2Fe14B phase

Nd2Fe14B is the tetragonal crystal compound that gives neodymium magnets their strength, and the entire sintering process is arranged to grow and align grains of this single hard-magnetic phase.

Jet milling

Jet milling uses high-velocity inert-gas jets to grind coarse rare-earth alloy into a few-micron powder while excluding oxygen, because particle size and low oxygen content largely determine the finished magnet's coercivity.

Hydrogen decrepitation (HD)

Hydrogen decrepitation exposes NdFeB alloy to hydrogen so it absorbs the gas and crumbles along its grain boundaries, a technique used both to break down fresh ingot and to liberate powder from scrap magnets in recycling.

Cerium substitution

Cerium substitution partially replaces neodymium with the far more abundant and cheaper rare earth cerium, trading some magnet performance for lower cost and reduced dependence on the tight NdPr supply.

Samarium-iron-nitride (SmFeN)

Samarium-iron-nitride is a high-performance magnetic powder used chiefly in bonded magnets, valued for good coercivity and corrosion resistance without any dysprosium, and it is a candidate for shrinking the heavy-rare-earth content of small motors.

Magnetic keeper

A keeper is a soft-iron bar placed across a magnet's poles during storage or shipping that closes the magnetic circuit, raises the operating point, and protects the magnet from self-demagnetization and stray-field effects.

Squareness ratio (Hk/Hcj)

The squareness ratio compares the field at which polarization begins to fall sharply with the intrinsic coercivity, and a high value means the demagnetization curve stays flat so the magnet resists partial demagnetization.

Recoil permeability

Recoil permeability is the reversible slope a magnet follows back up a minor loop after a demagnetizing excursion, and it describes how a magnet behaves when an opposing field is applied and then removed.

Helmholtz coil

A Helmholtz coil is a pair of matched coils producing a uniform region used to measure a magnet's total magnetic moment, giving a fast production check of whether a part was fully and correctly magnetized.

Vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM)

A vibrating sample magnetometer measures a small sample's full hysteresis loop by vibrating it in a field and sensing the induced signal, and it is the laboratory instrument that produces the remanence and coercivity numbers on a datasheet.

Magnetic dipole moment

The magnetic dipole moment is the total magnetic strength of a whole magnet expressed as a single vector quantity, and unlike surface gauss it does not depend on where the measurement is taken, which makes it the preferred figure for quality control.

Pole wheel (magnetic encoder ring)

A pole wheel is a ring or disc magnetized with many alternating poles around its circumference so that a nearby sensor can count the transitions and measure rotational position or speed, one of the highest-volume multipole applications.

Hall-effect sensing

A Hall-effect sensor outputs a voltage proportional to the magnetic field passing through it, and it is the device that reads the alternating poles of an encoder magnet to turn a magnetic pattern into an electrical position signal.

Magnetostriction (Terfenol-D)

Magnetostriction is the slight change in a material's dimensions when it is magnetized, exploited in rare-earth alloys such as Terfenol-D to build actuators and sonar transducers, and it is the effect behind the audible hum of transformers and motors.

What’s happening

• Coded magnets deliver behaviors ordinary magnets can't: precise alignment, latch-on-contact, contactless spring, and rotational detents - all written into the pole pattern rather than built as a mechanism.
• The category traces to Correlated Magnetics Research's maxel printing - designed pole patterns written onto standard magnet blanks, so the innovation lives in the magnetizing fixture and the software, not in exotic alloy.
• Fast-growing applications: phone and tablet mounts with portrait/landscape rotation, smart enclosures and latches, rotational indexing and detents, self-aligning fixtures, and tool-free service panels.
• Design software (Polyvision) lets engineers simulate a pole pattern and order the resulting custom coded magnet - the practical bridge between 'magnets that behave' and a part number.
• Buyer education is the differentiator: magnetic viewing film and demo kits let a customer feel align, latch, spring and hold before they design them in. Nothing in a datasheet substitutes for that.
• The magnet distribution market remains unusually fragmented - dozens of independent regional distributors and family-held manufacturers, many without succession plans - which is the classic precondition for consolidation.
• Rare-earth magnet supply is the industry's defining story. Since 2025 China has run an export-licensing regime covering heavy rare earths, finished magnets and magnet-making technology, with rules that reach foreign-made goods containing Chinese-origin material. Licence timing, not price, is now the thing that stops a production line.
• The single hardest deadline in the sector is a defense one: US rules bar Chinese-origin sintered NdFeB and SmCo magnets from Department of Defense systems from 1 January 2027, which is why every US magnet startup markets against that date. USA Rare Earth states it plainly on its own front page.
• MP Materials is the furthest along on a US mine-to-magnet chain: it mines and refines at Mountain Pass in California and runs a Magnetics Division producing finished NdFeB at its Independence facility in Texas, backed by a Department of Defense arrangement and commercial offtake with automotive and technology buyers.
• A second wave of US magnet makers is now real rather than announced: USA Rare Earth (rebranded USARE) building magnet manufacturing in Stillwater, Oklahoma with Round Top in Texas upstream; Vulcan Elements in North Carolina; and Noveon Magnetics in San Marcos, Texas, which sinters magnets from recycled feedstock.
• Europe is building the same chain independently: Neo Performance Materials' magnet plant in Estonia, Solvay's separation restart at La Rochelle, Carester in France, Less Common Metals in the UK, and HyProMag's recycling lines - driven by the EU Critical Raw Materials Act benchmarks rather than by price.
• NdPr oxide pricing stays volatile and policy-driven rather than demand-driven, which is why Western projects increasingly seek price floors, long-term supply agreements or government offtake instead of selling into the spot market.
• Heavy rare earths - dysprosium and terbium - are the true bottleneck, not neodymium. Grain-boundary diffusion, which places heavy REE only along grain boundaries where coercivity is actually set, is now standard practice at serious manufacturers and is the most commercially important materials development in the field.
• Magnet recycling has moved from pilot to feedstock: HyProMag, Cyclic Materials, Noveon and others recover rare earths, or reprocess whole magnets, from end-of-life motors, drives, HDDs and manufacturing swarf - the fastest route to non-Chinese material that does not require a mine.
• Demand is set by EV traction motors and wind generators, with humanoid robotics and drones emerging as a third vector: every actuator in a humanoid is a small high-performance magnet, which is why magnet makers now court robotics programs directly.
• Apple's MagSafe put a multipole magnet ring into hundreds of millions of pockets and made 'magnets that self-align' a mainstream consumer expectation - still the single best teaching example a coded-magnet site has, and the reason Qi2 carries a magnet ring at all.
• Safety and shipping shape the consumer end: high-strength magnet sets face ingestion-hazard rules, and magnetized cargo carries air-freight restrictions under UN3506 - a content gap most magnet retailers underserve and a genuine opening for an educational site.
• In July 2025 the US Department of Defense agreed to become the largest shareholder in MP Materials and to guarantee a price floor for its neodymium-praseodymium output, an unusually direct government intervention aimed at insulating a domestic magnet supply chain from Chinese price swings.
• Apple and MP Materials announced a roughly half-billion-dollar agreement in 2025 for MP to supply recycled-content rare-earth magnets from its Texas facility, tying a flagship consumer-electronics buyer directly to a domestic magnet source.
• Vacuumschmelze is building a rare-earth magnet plant in Sumter, South Carolina to supply permanent magnets for General Motors' electric-vehicle motors, marking a return of large-scale NdFeB magnet manufacturing to the United States.
• In April 2025 China placed seven medium and heavy rare-earth elements — samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium — and related magnets under an export-licensing requirement, disrupting deliveries to automakers and defense suppliers worldwide.
• China further broadened its rare-earth export rules in late 2025 to reach foreign-made products that contain Chinese-origin rare earths or were made using Chinese magnet technology, extending the controls well beyond its own borders.
• Niron Magnetics is commercializing an iron-nitride 'Clean Earth' permanent magnet that uses no rare earths at all, backed by strategic investors including General Motors, Stellantis and Western Digital, and is building a commercial production plant in Minnesota.
• Lynas Rare Earths began producing separated heavy rare earths, including dysprosium and terbium, at its Malaysian plant in 2025, becoming the first commercial producer of separated heavy rare earths outside China.
• The European Union's Critical Raw Materials Act, in force since 2024, sets 2030 benchmarks for the bloc to mine, process and recycle more of its own strategic materials and to cap reliance on any single third country, directly shaping European magnet-chain investment.
• USA Rare Earth listed on the Nasdaq in 2025 and now trades publicly as it builds its sintered NdFeB magnet plant in Stillwater, Oklahoma, part of a wave of Western magnet startups turning to public markets and government support for capital.
• The Wireless Power Consortium's Qi2 standard carries a ring of magnets, derived from Apple's MagSafe design, into the broader smartphone market, so magnetic self-alignment is now a cross-industry charging standard rather than one vendor's feature.
• Humanoid-robot programs such as Tesla's Optimus and Figure's robots are emerging as a major new source of magnet demand, because each joint actuator needs a compact high-performance permanent-magnet motor.
• Tesla announced that its next-generation drive unit would be designed to use a permanent-magnet motor containing no rare earths, signaling that some large automakers are pursuing magnet-light or magnet-free motor designs to reduce supply risk.
• Cyclic Materials and HyProMag are scaling rare-earth magnet recycling on two continents, recovering magnet material from end-of-life motors, hard-disk drives and manufacturing scrap to feed magnet makers without new mining.
• Solvay restarted and expanded rare-earth separation at its La Rochelle site in France to produce neodymium-praseodymium oxides for permanent magnets, re-establishing large-scale European separation capacity outside China.
• The rare-earth supply squeeze of 2025 forced temporary production pauses at some automotive plants that ran short of magnet components, underlining how a licensing delay upstream can halt a finished-vehicle line downstream.

Questions people ask

What is a coded magnet?

define it against an ordinary magnet - the face carries a designed pattern of small magnetic regions rather than one north and one south, so the behavior is written into the pattern rather than the material

What is a Polymagnet?

the programmable-magnet product line from Correlated Magnetics Research; stress that it is a pattern printed onto a standard magnet blank, not a new magnet material

What does the N number in a magnet grade mean?

N designates neodymium and the number indexes maximum energy product in MGOe; say what the number measures rather than translating it into a pull force

What is the strongest magnet you can buy?

sintered NdFeB at the top commercial grade; immediately add that strongest on paper is usually the wrong choice once heat or corrosion enter, because that is the answer the asker actually needs

Are neodymium magnets the same thing as rare earth magnets?

rare earth is the family - NdFeB and SmCo both belong to it; explain the naming so the buyer can read a datasheet, and note the rare earths are not geologically rare, the processing is what is concentrated

What's the difference between neodymium, samarium cobalt and ferrite magnets?

compare on the four axes that decide a selection - strength, temperature behavior, corrosion resistance and cost - rather than listing properties

What are the disadvantages of neodymium magnets?

be straight - they corrode without a coating, they are brittle and chip, they lose coercivity as they heat, and supply is policy-exposed; this honesty is what makes the page trustworthy

Is there a shortage of rare earth magnets and why are prices moving?

explain the mechanism only - China has run an export-licensing regime covering heavy rare earths, finished magnets and magnet-making technology since 2025, and NdPr feedstock pricing is policy-driven rather than demand-driven; never quote a price or predict a direction

What is a Halbach array and what is it good for?

a rotating-orientation arrangement that concentrates flux on one face and nearly cancels it on the other; lead with why it matters - more usable field per unit of magnet in motors and holding

How can I see the poles on a magnet?

magnetic viewing film reveals the pattern in visible color; note this is the practical way to confirm a coded or multipole part was patterned as ordered

What's the difference between sintered and bonded neodymium magnets?

pressed and fired for maximum strength versus moulded with a polymer for complex shapes and tighter tolerance; frame it as a strength-versus-geometry trade, not a quality ranking

Does stacking magnets together make them stronger?

stacking increases pull up to a point and then saturates as the length in the magnetization direction grows; explain it changes the operating point rather than adding forces, which is why two magnets do not give double the pull

How is the strength of a magnet measured?

separate the three numbers people treat as one - pull force, surface gauss and remanence Br; this single distinction resolves more confusion than anything else on the page

What's the difference between a coded magnet and an ordinary multipole magnet?

multipole magnetization is the industrial ancestor with alternating poles on one face; coded magnets extend it to arbitrary designed patterns producing align, latch, spring, detent and twist-release behaviors

What's the difference between N42 and N52 magnets?

a difference in remanence and energy product; the useful point is that the higher grade usually carries lower coercivity, so N42 can outperform N52 in a hot or demagnetizing circuit

What do the letters after the grade mean - M, H, SH, UH, EH?

the suffix rates intrinsic coercivity, not strength; this is the single highest-value correction to publish because buyers read the ladder as a strength ladder

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