Tag: TDK Ferrites in Shawnee OK

Japanese Firm TDK Ferrites to Leave Shawnee, OK in March 2022

Last week, Japanese electronics company TDK announced through a letter that they will be closing their Shawnee site located at 5900 N. Harrison, on March 2022. The TDK Ferrites Corporation which currently employs 157 Shawnee residents and founded in 1987, will move its Shawnee operations out of the country in connection with the company’s global restructuring.

Nonetheless, the TDK letter expressed gratitude to the Shawnee community, being its home for more than 30 years, to which TDk has been an active participant in many activities not only in Shawnee but in the state of Oklahoma as well. The company also gave assurance that it will continue to provide high quality services and products even if their TDK ferrite mining and production operations will transfer to Japan and China, by the end of March next year.

A Brief Background on TDK and Ferrite

TDK was the very first company to commercialize ferrite in 1935. after Dr. Takeshi Takei and Dr. Yogoro Kato, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Department of Electrochemistry, invented industrial methods of using and producing electrical products made from ferrites.

Ferrite is basically a ceramic substance but possessing magnetic elements despite its non-metal nature. Ferrite products are made through sintering, a method similar to how chinawares are produced. It has the distinction of having higher electrical resistance than metal and does not conduct electric current at all.

That being the case, electrical materials using ferrite allow for less power loss even when high-frequency electricity is exerted. Mainly because less heat is generated when compared to the heat levels generated by metallic magnetic substances. The most common uses of ferrites are for the production of various types of coils for different kinds of electronic devices and in cores for transformers.