Are you talking about silicon steel, used in transformers, or just plain steel?

Just plain steel! I can have the exact specs for you tomorrow morning (in about 13 hours).

Would be something like this: mcmaster.com/#wire-rope-links/…

Silicon steel, normally laminated with lacquer in transformers, is very had to machine or even drill, yet it makes a very strong wire for suspension bridges. If it is easy to drill, it is low-carbon steel 1018, or something like it.

magnetic field reaches saturation but without causing the circuit to overheat That is slicing it thin, with contradictory results. They are not exclusive events.

I'm pretty sure it's low-carbon, but I can be sure tomorrow! Basically, I'm trying to replicate an effect I found in a paper (ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1456917) which relies on eddy currents flowing inside the material (so laminated material would not work). Would eddy currents flow inside the silicon steel as well as regular steel? And would the coercive forces be very different? According to the author, I need to use a material that has a large coercive force and which allows eddy currents to flow.

Comments are getting long. Buy a piece of low carbon (1018) bar steel from McMaster-Carr, so little if any machining is needed.

Hi Sparky, do you mind if we chat just for a few minutes?

What is the question?

I'm not sure I need to do any machining.

The constraints on the size of my toroid are not fixed.

They can be changed - we just happened to order a large steel toroid because it's easy to wind coils on.

Not with bar steel. No toroid unless you buy one

Not what with bar steel?

Do you war a bar magnet or a toroid magnet?

I don't care actually. I just want the field inside to saturate.

I chose a toroid because the field is concentrated inside throughout, but it doesn't really matter to me.

Then soft 1018 bar steel is best, and the lowest cost steel you can buy.

But if it's soft, doesn't that mean it won't retain any magnetization once the external field is decreased to zero?

It will retail what it can, but not strong like alloy steels or rare-earth magnets. It is like magnetizing a nail.

Dinner is calling me. Did you have anything important to ask?

Okay, go for it...

I will think about it some more.

Good luck

I think nails are considered hard ferromagnetic materials though.

So it's a bit different than a nail.

But anyways, thanks for your help!