Magnets are interesting fun things. We have magnets in our daily course of life from Toys to heavy industry (magnet application) which require
“The strong permanent magnets made from alloys of rare earth elements are termed as Rare Earth Magnets”.
The ultimate difference between Rare earth magnets and other permanent magnet is that rare earth magnets are made from alloys of rare earth elements while other permanent magnets are ferrite or alnico(magnet appication). Generally, rare earth elements are called so because of two significant reasons. The first naming reason relies on the initially perceived dearth of all rare earth elements. The second one emerges from the fact that it is quite difficult for each rare earth element to extract it purely from its mineral ore bed.
The magnetic field typically produced by


To understand rare earth magnets completely, it is important to know what they are made of and where they come from. In
Rare earth magnets are considered second generation magnets with its derviates expanding to 4th Generation. Manufacturing of these magnets was initiated in late twenty century i.e. 1970. First Rare earth magnet developed was YCo5 by Strnat of U.S Air force
There are many processes for manufacturing rare earth magnets. The most common method is known as Powder Metallurgy. In conventional powder metallurgy manufacturing route,
Common applications of Rare Earth Magnets
Since the prices of regular permanent magnets became competitive in the 1990s, neodymium magnets replaced ferrite and alnico magnets in many applications of industry and many of myriad applications in modern technology, requiring powerful magnets. Common applications of rare earth magnets are:

- Used for head actuators in computer hard drive disks.
- Used in high-performance AC servo motors.
- Useful in wind turbine generators.
- Used in bicycle dynamos.
- Used in loudspeakers and headphones.
- Used to erase heads for cheap cassette recorders.
- Used in fishing reel brakes.
- Used in automatic door locks.
- Magnetic bearings and couplings.
- Used in
bench top NMR spectrometers - Used in mechanical switches for e-cigarette firing.
- Used in motors having permanent magnets in cordless tools.
- Used in traction motors and integral started generators, both in hybrid and electric vehicles.
- Used in industrialization; for instance maintaining product purity, protection of equipment and quality control.
- Producing mechanically powdered flashlights, electricity generation in shaking or rotating motion (hand
crank powered ). - Used in capturing fine metallic particles in lubricating oils (
crank cases of internal combustion engines), keeping set particles out of circulation, hence rendering them unable to cause grinding wear of moving machine parts. - Uses in electric machines (motors) such as:
- Cordless tools
- Servo motors
- Lifting and compressor motors
- Synchronous motors
- Spindle and stepper motors
- Electrical power steering
- Uses in electric generators for wind turbines (only generators having permanent magnet excitation).
- Used in turbines that
utilizes gears requiring less paramagnetic material per megawatt. - Used in retail media case decouplers.
- Used in industrial processing where powerful neodymium magnets are required to catch foreign bodies and to protect product and processing.