Changes in Material Behavior according to the Amount of Recycled Magnetic Materials in Polymer-Bonded Magnets Based on Thermoplastics

The applications of polymer-bonded magnets are increasing within drive technology mostly because of new concepts concerning the magnetic excitation of direct current (DC) or synchronous machines. To satisfy this rising demand for hard magnetic filler particles—mainly rare earth materials—in polymer-bonded magnets, a recycling strategy for thermoplastic-based bonded magnets has to be found that can be applied to polymer-bonded magnets. The most important factor for the recycling strategy is the filler material, especially when using rare earth materials, as those particles are associated with limited resources and high costs. However, thermoplastic-based bonded magnets reveal the opportunity to reuse the compound material system without separation of the filler from the matrix. Most known recycling strategies focus on sintered magnets, which leads to highly limited knowledge in terms of strategies for recycling bonded magnets. This paper illustrates the impact of different amounts of recycling material within the material system on material behavior and magnetic properties that can be achieved by taking different flow conditions and varying gating systems into account. The recycled material is generated by the mechanical reuse of shreds. We found that a supporting effect can be achieved with up to 50% recycled material in the material system, which leads to only minimal changes in the material’s behavior. Furthermore, changes in magnetic properties in terms of recycled material are affected by the gating system. To reduce the reduction in magnetic properties, the number of pin points should be as low as possible, and they should located in the middle. The filler orientation of the recycled material is minimally influenced by the outer magnetic field and, therefore, mainly follows the flow conditions. These flow conditions are likely to be affected by elastic flow proportions with increasing amounts of recycled material.