Manufacture of remanent reed switch

Claim 1

Process for fabrication of a hermetically sealed remanent reed, self-latching magnetic switch comprising a sealed envelope containing at least two protruding reed members, each of said members including an electrically contacting surface, in which at least a portion of at least one of the said reeds consists essentially of an alloy containing from 40 to 75 parts by weight cobalt, 25 to 60 parts by weight iron, and 1 to 5 parts by weight vanadium, in which said body portion is produced by a series of processing steps including hot working, heat treatment, quenching, cold working, and phase precipitation hardening, so resulting in a remanent magnetization of at least 10,000 gauss and a coercivity of at least 10 oersteds, characterized in that the said series of processing steps concludes with operations in which a round wire body portion of the said alloy is strand annealed so as to give the said body portion a heat treatment equivalent to maintenance at a temperature of 850*C to 1050*C for a period of from 10 seconds to 15 minutes and is chilled so as to result in an elongation of at least 10 percent and a maximum tensile strength of 200,000 psi, is flattened to a thickness reduction of at least 40 percent, said figure being the fraction of the least thickness dimension after flattening divided by the wire diameter before flattening, the said wire prior to flattening having the said elongation and maximum tensile strength followed by precipitation hardening resulting from annealing in a non-oxidizing atmosphere at a temperature from 550*C to 670*C for a period of from one-half to 6 hours.