Matthew Swallows Report – Magnetics Event LEGO
By Paul Fears | 23 April 2019
Matthew Swallow, our Technical Product Manager for magnets and magnetic assemblies, recently attended the UK Magnetics Society’s ‘Magnetic Measurement and Sensors’ event held at the LEGO House in Billund, Denmark (21-22 March 2019). The event was sponsored by Bunting Magnetics. Matthew reports back on the exciting and informative two-day event.
“It is not often that a personal passion and a work commitment coincide and so I was genuinely thrilled to be able to take part in this event at the self-proclaimed home of LEGO.
The two-day event was one of the UK Magnetic Society’s best yet with a range of talks from hard science on the metallurgy of magnetism to finding water in the desert from a helicopter.
- Sensing Magnets at Magnetic Measurement and Sensors Event
- Bunting sponsor UK Magnetics Society’s 31st Ewing Event
One of my favourite talks was from Lukasz Mierczak of Brockhaus Messtechnik GmbH & Co. Their technology could be used to measure the effect of laminations on permanent magnets, validate the quality of those laminations prior to shipment, and compare directly with magnets of different types of lamination material. Currently, only two of these pieces of equipment exist, but a production version is not far away.
Magnetic Measurement
Magnetic measurement was a thoroughly discussed topic with a huge range of techniques available to measure everything from Nano Tesla to 70 Tesla. Graphene was mentioned as a next generation material for the production of hall sensors. Interestingly, the discussion’s starting point was to try and play down the hype regarding Graphene that has been seen in recent years. The talk focused on what has actually been done at Paragraf.
However, the highlight of the sensor presentation was about the LEGO brick magnetic scanner from MetroLab. This could be a game changer for integrating into something like the 3D Magnetic Field Scanner, built out of LEGO, as the versatility of LEGO and the plastic nature of the material make it perfect for adapting to different magnetic shapes and scanning profiles.
On the Bunting Magnetics stand, we exhibited our capability to produce:
- Plastic bonded magnets;
- Sintered Neodymium Iron Boron Magnets (NdFeB) with a high accuracy direction of magnetism;
- Magnet setters to accurately set an ALNICO (AlNiCo) sensor magnet to within a couple of gauss.
There was a great deal of interest in our magnet setters and the +/-0.5 degree DOM sintered Neodymium magnets.
The UK Magnetics Society event at LEGO House coincided with a record breaking monthly order intake for Bunting Magnetics’ Bespoke Magnet and Magnet Assembly division. We also shipped three Magnetising systems (two ALNICO setters and an automated speaker driver charger).
Whilst in Denmark, we also delivered a bespoke magnetic training course to one of our European customers. March 2019 proved to be a very exciting month!”
For further information on magnets used in sensor applications, please contact us on
Phone: +44(0)1442 875081
Email: sales.berkhamsted@buntingmagnetics.com
Via the Bunting Europe website for specialist magnets and magnetic assemblies
