Cast Alnico Magnet

Alnico magnets are traditionally classified using numbers assigned by the Magnetic Materials Producers Association (MMPA), for example, alnico 3 or alnico 5. Alnico magnets are produced by casting or sintering processes.[8] Anisotropic alnico magnets are oriented by heating above a critical temperature and cooling in the presence of a magnetic field. Both isotropic and anisotropic alnico require proper heat treatment to develop optimal magnetic properties-without it alnico's coercivity is about 10 Oe, comparable to technical iron, which is a soft magnetic material. After the heat treatment alnico becomes a composite material, named "precipitation material"-it consists of iron- and cobalt-rich[9] precipitates in rich-NiAl matrix