Terry Auchstetter, Director of Marketing & Product Development at Bodine Electric Company, attended the 2026 Motor, Drive Systems & Magnetics Conference at Florida State University in Tallahassee on March 4 & 5. Auchstetter has now attended this conference five times and noted that the presentations each year, whether intentionally or not, have an overarching theme. “I remember years ago when there was a lot of buzz about government regulations on motor efficiency. And in another year, the conversation was dominated by how to get the most power density from the smallest motor (because the drone market was exploding that year). This year, with China’s recent implementation of strict export controls on rare earth magnets used in motors, many presentations proposed alternative ways to source rare earth magnets and alternatives to rare earth magnets themselves.”

In 2025, China implemented strict export restrictions on “heavy” rare earth elements, including dysprosium. Dysprosium is an element that improves the performance of magnets made from rare earth materials. Bodine Electric’s brushless DC motors have rare earth magnets in them, but we no longer use dysprosium. So, the restrictions by China have no immediate impact on Bodine Electric. Still, it is good to keep up with what’s going on in the industry and that is why Auchstetter attended the conference. These are some of the things the attendees learned about:

• Recycling magnets from used motors to extract rare earth material
• Extracting rare earth materials from the waste produced from mining other materials
• Using magnet-free motors (wound rotor synchronous motor, AC induction motor, synchronous reluctance motor, switched reluctance motor, electrostatic motor)
• Not using stronger magnets than needed for the application
• Axial Flux motors vs Radial Flux motors vs Transverse Flux motors
• Alternative high-performance magnets that don’t use rare earth materials

Bodine Electric has technical resources on our website for those who want to take a deep dive into how ferrite magnets are used in Brush DC Permanent Magnet Motors and how rare earth magnets are used in Brushless DC Permanent Magnet Motors.