James Mckenzie
Hirst Magnetic Instruments
CEO
James is the Chief Executive Officer at Hirst Magnetics Ltd joining the business in April 2022. James has been involved in bringing new technology and products to market over the last 25 years. James has held senior management positions and leadership roles in deep tech organizations from start-ups to multinationals.
James is a Member of the Institute of Directors, Society of Light and Lighting, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, a Chartered Engineer and Chartered Physicist. James was also elected as Vice President of Business for the Institute of Physics (IOP) and was a trustee of the IOP from 2016-2020. James is Chair of the IOP Magnetism Group, being elected in 2023 and is a committee member of the UK MagSoc, being elected in 2023. James also writes a monthly column on physics and business in Physics World the IOP membership magazine.
Presentations
Pulsed Field Magnetometers: Closing the loop on hard magnetic material characterization
The Pulsed-Field Magnetometer (PFM) is internationally recognised for the complete characterization of modern magnetic materials. It is a method for generating a hysteresis graph similar to that of a permeameter.
Hirst recently launched its 8th generation of PFM, magnet characterization magnetometers.
Uniquely these include the Hirst proprietary Self De-magnetisation Field Function SDFF™ which accurately generates an open to closed circuit mapping (O2C™). This finally gives permeameter like measurements. With a maximum field of 10.5T (8356 kA/m / 105 kOe) even the most coercive materials and highest grades of NdFeB magnets and SmCo can be measured, while traditional permeameters cannot measure these high coercivity material due to pole piece saturation limitations. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has issued IEC TR62331, a draft to define the standard methodology for the characterization of permanent magnetic materials using the PFM technique.