Ferite Urziceni

The Întreprinderea de Ferite (Ferrite Enterprise) in Urziceni produced ferrite cores and magnetic materials for the Romanian electronics industry. It started production in 1971 on the basis of Romanian research, with only a small import of technological equipment from the West [1].

1969–1989

The factory was designed in 1968–1969 at km 57.5 of the Bucharest–Buzău road, to supply every ferrite part the Romanian economy needed [3]. Its processes came from the research of the ferrite section of ICE (and earlier of Electronica and ICPE), except for the cores of TV line output transformers and deflection yokes, made under a Plessey licence with Plessey equipment (Smith tunnel kilns with protective atmosphere, Dorst presses and spray dryer) [3]. The postface of the book’s second volume names the ferrite factory as an example of a plant conceived and built on Romanian technical and scientific work [4]. A further line made magnetic strip for refrigerators from barium ferrite and plastic, and Electronica’s ferrite equipment was moved to Urziceni [3].

The Plessey Mn-Zn material for line output transformer cores had losses that rose with temperature, which could lead to thermal runaway, overheating and even fire in TV sets; it was replaced by ICE’s Elferit B1 power ferrite, with its loss minimum at 100 °C (16 kHz, 200 mT), and later by Elferit B2, with a higher saturation induction [3]. Deflection yoke cores were sintered in normal air instead of a protective atmosphere, which gave them a high-resistivity oxidised surface and removed the risk of short circuits through the core [3]. Ni-Zn ferrite antenna rods for radios, about 30,000 a month for Electronica, reached the required quantity and quality in early 1971 with help from ICE [3].

In 1971 the factory made 997,271 m of refrigerator magnetic strip, 1,547,000 plastic magnets for TV picture correction (three sizes), isotropic Elferit J2 magnets, about 360,000 ferrite antenna rods and about 300,000 strontium-ferrite segments for the DC motors of cars and lorries; production levelled off in 1975 [3]. After 1980 the lack of hard currency made spare parts for the Western equipment hard to get, and some machines had to be patched up or abandoned [3]. The successor company is Rofep [3].

In 1989

In 1989 the enterprise was listed as Întreprinderea de Ferite (IFU), within the Industrial Central for Electronics and Computer Technology (CIETC) of the Ministry of the Electrotechnical Industry; its entry shows the logo that is also reproduced in the gallery below [2].