Making amorphous powder iron

[PaulLowrance]

Hi,

Does anyone have any ideas of making amorphous iron in the garage?  This could possible work for the MEMM core since it would most likely have nano size domains.

The idea of heating iron to molten level does not sound attractive, and then cooling it within microseconds to achieve the amorphous stage. Yikes!  Any ideas?  Supposedly the only method to achieve such rapid cooling is by limiting the iron to a thin wire, which is fine, and then perhaps rapidly pouring some cold liquid over the iron.

Another idea is to make amorphous iron powder. This could be mixed with a binder to make an amorphous iron powder core. It might be easier to create such powder iron since you can don't have to worry about cracking the iron during the flash cooling stage. This would allow you to basically hit the molten iron with a high power flow of cold liquid.

Regardless then resulting iron would have to pure, like 99.9+% pure.  Perhaps another problem is preventing the liquid from appreciably reacting with the iron.

Is this realistic?  Best to just buy the amorphous powder iron, but where?

Thanks for any input.

Regards,
Paul Lowrance

[PaulLowrance]

I just posted the above, but came across an interesting technique ->

http://www.vacuumschmelze.de/dynamic/en/home/researchampinnovation/processtechnology/vacuuminductionmelting.php

I'm wondering how difficult it would be to make a vacuum induction melting pot.  Not sure if it does any good to put the iron in a vacuum to help remove impurities if I'm just going to be pouring a liquid on it.

Regards,
Paul Lowrance

[rapttor]

Hey Paul, sorry if I got you distracted with the amorphus cores.... I have some links to suppliers, I'll see if I can dig them up...

-art

[PaulLowrance]

Thanks Art. I'm trying to find out if amorphous magnetic material has atomic size domains. If true then it should work better than even nanocrystalline cores if the amorphous material has similar saturation & permeability.

How cost effective are these amorphous cores?  Hopefully better the metglas.

Regards,
Paul Lowrance

[Liberty]

Thanks Art. I'm trying to find out if amorphous magnetic material has atomic size domains. If true then it should work better than even nanocrystalline cores if the amorphous material has similar saturation & permeability.

How cost effective are these amorphous cores?  Hopefully better the metglas.

Regards,
Paul Lowrance

Hi Paul,

Would powdered magnetite work for the type of core that you want?  You can probably buy it on ebay pretty easy.