One magnet. Hundreds of poles. A force you draw before you make it. — the whole idea, in one line
Sixty years ago a magnet did one thing: it stuck. Then Correlated Magnetics Research learned to print a pattern of tiny poles — maxels — across a magnet's face, and the force became a design. It can align, latch, spring, hold, detent and release, all decided by the pattern rather than the material.
This catalog is a way in. It covers the whole universe of coded and multipole magnets — the idea, the kits you can hold, the working parts, the software and fixtures that make them, the trade behind them, and the source it all traces back to. Read it on screen, or print it and mark it up.
Start here. A coded magnet is not a stronger magnet — it is a magnet that has been told what to do. These are the ideas you need before the parts make sense.
A magnet whose face carries a designed pattern of magnetic regions instead of one plain north and south. The behavior lives in the pattern, not the material — so the same neodymium blank can be made to grip, push, or click. This is the whole premise of everything that follows.
Access: the explainers at codedmag.com and multipolemag.com (codedmag.com · multipolemag.com)
One "magnetic pixel" — a single small poled region. Print enough of them, in the right arrangement, and a magnet stops merely being strong and starts behaving. The maxel is to a coded magnet what a pixel is to a screen.
Access: read it at maxelmag.com (maxelmag.com)
The trick behind "latch" and "spring." A coded pattern can be tuned so a pair grips hard on contact (near field) yet pushes away at a distance (far field). Two behaviors, opposite in sign, printed into one part.
Access: force-curve primer at multipolemagnets.com (multipolemagnets.com)
Lay this hi-res film on a coded magnet and its hidden pole pattern appears in visible color. The fastest way to see that a magnet has been programmed — and the classic first purchase for anyone learning the field.
$— · Access: polymagnet.com (polymagnet.com)
You cannot argue with a magnet in your hand. These are the kits that let you feel align, latch, spring and hold before you design them into anything.
The magnet that converts skeptics. A pair whose forces are tuned so you feel the field change character as you bring them together — the clearest single demonstration that force can be designed.
Access: polymagnet.com — Demos & Kits (polymagnet.com)
Shows how a coded face concentrates holding force where you want it. Side by side with a plain magnet of the same size, the difference is not subtle.
Access: polymagnet.com — Demos & Kits (polymagnet.com)
Two faces that find one another and settle into a fixed angle. The idea behind indexing dials, keyed connectors, and anything that must seat the same way every time.
Access: polymagnet.com — Demos & Kits (polymagnet.com)
The accessories that turn a demo into a lab: film to see the poles, a zinc-coated plate to feel holding on steel, a brass constraining rod to guide motion. Cheap, and the fastest way to actually understand a part.
Access: polymagnet.com — Tools & Accessories (polymagnet.com)
Real, purchasable parts — grouped by what they do, not what they're made of. Thirty-eight products across eight behavior families; a representative few are below.
Center-alignment and 2- or 3-position rotational pairs, long- and short-range, in #6 and M4 countersunk mounts so they bolt straight into a real assembly. The workhorses of the catalog — nine variants.
Access: polymagnet.com — Alignment (polymagnet.com)
Twelve-position (30°) detents that click like a rotary switch, and twist-release pairs that hold when aligned and let go with a short turn. Seven variants, in D-shape and round.
Access: polymagnet.com — Rotational & Detent (polymagnet.com)
Push-to-close latches, sliding spring-latches, and a short-range repel spring. The parts behind a lid that snaps shut on its own or a drawer that pushes back — no mechanism, no wear.
Access: polymagnet.com — Latch / Spring (polymagnet.com)
Coded pairs sized for phones and small or large tablets that snap on and rotate between portrait and landscape, then hold. The consumer face of the technology — the same idea Apple shipped as MagSafe.
Access: polymagnet.com — Device Mounts (polymagnet.com)
Don't need a whole design program yet? The network's beta distributors stock coded pairs and demo magnets you can order now and take an enquiry when you need something specific.
Access: ferrospring.com store · polymagnetics.com enquiries (ferrospring.com · polymagnetics.com)
The means of production. A coded magnet is really software plus a magnetizing fixture — these are the tools and services that turn "a magnet that behaves" into a part on a drawing.
Simulate a pole pattern, watch the force curve it produces, then order the custom coded magnet that results. The practical bridge between "magnets that behave" and a manufacturable part.
Access: polymagnet.com (polymagnet.com)
The gatekeeper of the whole field: the fixture that writes the pattern. Pulse magnetizers and measurement gear from Magnet-Physik, Laboratorio Elettrofisico, Brockhaus and Metis. Whoever owns the fixture owns the part.
Access: the makers, on the suppliers page (wholemagnetics.com/field/suppliers/)
You have a problem — a lid, a connector, a dial — and want the magnet designed to solve it. Bring the behavior you need; the pattern gets engineered to fit your assembly and mounting.
Access: wholemagnetics.com/design (wholemagnetics.com/design/)
Access to the whole market behind the parts — an unusually fragmented one, from a single inventor to sixty-odd makers to the rare-earth mines upstream. Mapped, so you can find any of it. This is also the field a consolidator would want a map of.
Sixty-one companies, from D2C retailers like K&J and Apex to global manufacturers — Shin-Etsu, Proterial, TDK, VAC — and the coded-adjacent specialists. Who makes what, and where they sit.
Access: the makers directory (wholemagnetics.com/field/makers/)
Mine to magnet: the miners, refiners, alloy and powder makers, and the magnetizing-equipment builders — MP Materials, Lynas, Neo, and the fixtures without which none of it happens. Twenty-six, with recycling included.
Access: the suppliers directory (wholemagnetics.com/field/suppliers/)
Where the field checks its facts: the IEEE Magnetics Society, Magnetics Magazine, the IMA, and the market-intelligence houses that track rare-earth supply — USGS, Adamas, Benchmark. Eleven sources worth citing.
Access: the standards directory (wholemagnetics.com/field/standards/)
One name sits at the center of all of it. The page that traces the coded-magnet technology back to its source, and the handful of programmable/multipole specialists working the same seam.
Access: the technology page (wholemagnetics.com/field/technology/)
For going deeper — the societies, the trade press, and the video shelf that teach the field to anyone willing to look.
Twenty vetted explainers — how the poles are printed, what the behaviors look like, and applications in the wild. The best on-ramp if you learn by watching.
Access: wholemagnetics.com/videos (wholemagnetics.com/videos/)
The IEEE Magnetics Society for the science, Magnetics Magazine for the industry, and the International Magnetics Association for the trade. Where practitioners actually keep up.
Access: ieeemagnetics.org · magneticsmag.com (ieeemagnetics.org · magneticsmag.com)
Coded magnets ride on rare earths, and rare earths ride on policy. USGS summaries, Adamas and Benchmark for prices and flows — read these before you commit a design to a grade you can't source.
Access: the standards directory (wholemagnetics.com/field/standards/)
Every road in this catalog leads back to one place. Not a marketing claim — a matter of record.
Correlated Magnetics Research, of Huntsville, Alabama, invented the coded magnet — the maxel-printing technology behind this entire catalog. Conceived by the late Larry Fuller, a NASA engineer with 400-plus patents, and licensed into products as far as Apple's device magnets. The reference parts, the design software and the demos all come from here. If you buy one thing after reading this catalog, buy it from the people who made the field.
Access: polymagnet.com — Correlated Magnetics Research, Huntsville AL (www.polymagnet.com)