May 2026: Issue 9

Choosing a neodymium magnet isn't as simple as picking the strongest option on the shelf. The most common selection mistakes don't come from going too weak — they come from over specifying in the wrong direction. Temperature, coercivity, supply chain risk, and system-level design all play a role that a datasheet alone won't tell you.

The right grade is the one that performs reliably across your application's full operating life — not just on day one.

It's a situation more common than most engineers expect. A design was built around a samarium cobalt magnet — a perfectly reasonable choice at the time. The product shipped, performed well, and then years later the supply chain simply disappeared. The original supplier was gone, and every alternative either couldn't hit the spec or couldn't hit the price.

"We needed these magnets. We'd been using SmCo for years and just assumed that's what we had to keep using."

What looked like a sourcing problem turned out to be a spec problem. And it only took one conversation to figure that out.

When this customer brought their challenge to Allstar Magnetics, the team didn't lead with catalogs or lead times — they started by asking how the magnet was actually being used. The answer changed everything. The application never reached the elevated temperatures that had originally justified samarium cobalt. A high-temperature neodymium grade would perform just as well — and unlike SmCo, it required no export license and could be sourced reliably and quickly.

No costly redesign. No regulatory burden. Just the right magnet, finally matched to the real operating conditions.

Read the full case study to see how one question unlocked a smarter, sourceable solution.