Ferrite Magnets (95)

What are Ferrite Magnets?

Ferrite Magnets, easily identified by their dark graphite colour, are a type of permanent magnet made of the chemical compound ferrite. Consisting of about 90% iron oxide and 10% strontium carbonate, the materials that make up this magnet are abundant and economically available.

Ferrite magnets are also very inert, and do not rust or require any protective plating, meaning they can be used across a number of different applications. They have a reasonable resistance to demagnetisation and can operate at temperatures up to 180 degrees Celsius.

What is the strength of Ferrite Magnets?

Although ferrite magnets are considerably weaker than Neodymium magnets, they do offer an excellent strength and depth of field when their size or volume becomes relatively large.

An example of this is a ferrite magnet measuring 75mm x 50mm x 20mm thick. Two of these are quite difficult to pull apart, but their size makes them easy to get hold of and to handle. An identically sized neodymium magnet would have the potential to crush fingers and would be dangerous to handle. If these were used to make a magnetic conveyor bed, the conveyor would grind to a halt once a steel part landed on the magnetic bed because the attraction would be too excessive and the cost would be equally excessive.

But when ferrite magnets are used with inexpensive steel poles, very high clamping forces can be generated. For example, our F4MFE755020 measures 75mm x 50mm x 20mm and has a maximum pull of 5 Kgs. No matter how hard you try, it will not lift a steel weight heavier than 5 Kgs. However, if 2 steel plates each measuring 80mm x 60mm x 3mm are placed on either side of the magnet to make a steel x magnet x steel sandwich, then magnetism is concentrated on the 80 x 3mm edges of the poles and the pulling capacity of this magnet-steel assembly suddenly jumps to an incredible 50 Kgs!

What can you use Ferrite Magnets for?

Ferrite magnets are used in applications where magnets can be, or need to be, relatively large and the cost needs to be as low as possible, compared with the small and strong characteristics of neodymium magnets.

Ferrite magnets are used extensively for holiday fridge magnets, for large loudspeakers (particularly bass or subwoofers) and for magnetic conveyor systems where large areas underneath conveyor belts need to be magnetic, but must not be ferociously strong (you don't want your whole system grinding to a halt!).

High Performance clamping magnets can be constructed using cheap ferrite material and steel poles and this is a very common application for ferrite magnets. Ferrite Pot magnets and ferrite channel magnets use the same concept of concentrating magnetism to achieve unusually high clamping forces from cheap ferrite magnets.

What can FIRST4MAGNETS offer?

First4magnets.com stocks a wide range of ferrite magnets for almost any application. Can't find the magnet you're looking for? Contact our technical sales team on 0800 488 0288 for more information about our extensive range of magnets.