Sintered neodymium magnets are an indispensable and crucial part to hybrid and electric vehicles in the drive motor. Compared with other magnets, neodymium magnets have not only strong magnetic force which reaches high power of driving vehicles, but also can reduce the size of motor to make it fit for motor vehicle use.

To manufacture neodymium magnets, we need to shatter those contain necessary materials alloy into particles, forming these particles, and then sintering. After that, we need to cut the sintered ones into the needed size to complete the whole process. What the process feels like making a cake.

Of course, the actual mass production of high quality neodymium magnets is not so simple. We not only need to unify particles’ sizes into 3 ~ 5μm, but also should pay attention to well-proportion of particles’ shapes. In addition of that, we should consider the heating methods of sintering. In short, it needs to spare lots of efforts to make.

For an instance, “shaping process in magnetic field” after crushing alloy to 3 ~ 5 μ m is one of them. This procedure is to make shattered micro powder (micro magnets) has their orientation. The orientation refers to unify the micro powder magnetized direction into a fixed one. The more unified the magnetized direction is, the higher residual magnetic flux density gets. The implementation of this process needs to fill the micro powder into mould and strengthen the magnetic field to orient the micro powder before carrying out forcing molding process.

In order to achieve highly-unified orientation, creating a space of homogeneous magnetic field in the mould is quite necessary and important. Due to the configuration of the electromagnet and sizes, shapes, materials of mould result in uneven magnetic field and poor orientation, adopting magnetic field analysis or other methods to fine-tuning the magnetic field to achieve its homogeneity is necessary.

On manufacturing neodymium magnets, just as many reports reported, China plays a big role in it. Because Dy (dysprosium) is mostly mined in China, but China has begun to have a restriction on exports. Under this limitation, the decrease in supply Dy metal in market drives Dy metal prices rising up to US$ 3,100 per kg in July, 2011, reaching about 10 times than that of one year ago.