Alnico (AlNiCo) is the first developed a permanent magnet is made of aluminum, nickel, cobalt, iron and other trace metals composition of an alloy.According to different production process is divided into sintered Alnico (Sintered AlNiCo), and cast aluminum nickel and cobalt (Cast AlNiCo).Product shape of the round and square. Sintered products limited to the small size, their production out of rough tolerance is better than the rough cast product can be better workability.
Alnico alloys can be magnetised to produce strong magnetic fields and have a high coercivity (resistance to demagnetization), thus making strong permanent magnets. Of the more commonly available magnets, only rare-earth magnets such as neodymium and samarium-cobalt are stronger.
Alnico Magnets produce magnetic field strength at their poles as high as 1500 gausses (0.15 teslas), or about 3000 times the strength of Earth's magnetic field. Some brands of alnico are isotropic and can be efficiently magnetized in any direction. Other types, such as
Alnico 5 and alnico 8, are anisotropic, with each having a preferred direction of magnetization, or orientation. Anisotropic alloys generally have greater magnetic capacity in a preferred orientation than isotropic types. Alnico's remanence (Br) may exceed 12,000 G (1.2 T), its coercivity (Hc) can be up to 1000 oersteds (80 kA/m), its energy product ((BH)max) can be up to 5.5 MG·Oe (44 T·A/m). This means that alnico can produce a strong magnetic flux in closed magnetic circuits, but has relatively small resistance against demagnetization. The field strength at the poles of any permanent magnet depends very much on the shape and is usually well below the remanence strength of the material.
Alnico alloys have some of the highest Curie temperatures of any magnetic material, around 800 °C (1,470 °F), although the maximal working temperature is normally limited to around 538 °C (1,000 °F).[4] They are the only magnets that have useful magnetism even when heated red-hot.[5] This property, as well as its brittleness and high melting point, is the result of the strong tendency toward order due to intermetallic bonding between aluminium and other constituents. They are also one of the most stable magnets if they are handled properly. Alnico magnets are electrically conductive, unlike ceramic magnets.
Alnico magnets are widely used in industrial and consumer applications where strong permanent magnets are needed; examples are electric motors, electric guitar pickups, microphones, sensors, loudspeakers, magnetron tubes, and cow magnets. In many applications they are being superseded by rare-earth magnets, whose stronger fields (Br) and larger energy products (BHmax) allow smaller-size magnets to be used for a given application.
