Comparative Techno-economic Assessment of NdFeB Bonded Magnet Production: Injection Molding versus Big-Area Additive Manufacturing

There is an increasing demand for clean energy technologies such as wind turbines and electric vehicles, which generally require the use of high-performance critical rare earth permanent magnets (REPMs), e.g., neodymium–iron–boron (NdFeB) magnets. However, the growing demand for REPMs is subject to substantial supply risk owing to the near monopolization of the rare earth element supply and processing by China. One approach to lessen this risk is to recover magnet waste from processing and used magnets from end-of-life products. These recovered magnet materials may be used to produce bonded magnets via injection molding (IM). Another processing alternative that has recently been developed is big-area additive manufacturing (BAAM), a fused deposition modeling that produces magnets with comparable or even better performance than IM. Owing to the nascency of BAAM, the economic feasibility of this method at an industrial scale is still unknown. This paper provides a techno-economic assessment of BAAM relative to IM. The results reveal that BAAM is profitable and has a better economic performance than that of IM.