Of the more than 1200 permanent magnet or permanent magnet/electromagnet designs I have come up with, only around 30 were built and tested by Mark our group machinist in California. Of those 30 I feel we got overunity indications from 3 maybe 4. We put loads on the generators and got no indication of increase in load on the drive motor. We had limited funding and we used solid mild steel for core material. If we had been able to use laminated electrical steel like the type used in transformers we would have seen a very dramatic difference in results. We were working with a permeability of 300 when electrical steel would have had as high as 5000. I'm still amazed we got any power at all using the mild steel with the low permeability and problem of eddy current losses due to the steel not being laminated and having high electrical conductivity as compared to silicon electrical steel. I will always wonder how many of the designs built had the potential for overunity but had poor performance due to incorrect core material.
I wanted to tell anyone building magnetic motors or generators in an attempt to achieve overunity to try to use electrical steel if at all possible. It could be the difference between total failure and total success. There are many other core materials available than far exceed electrical steel but are very expensive. I have attached links that list the permeability of different materials and other useful information on the role of permeability of core material. Eddy current losses are very important also when choosing a material. Our mild steel would get to hot to touch and we had to stop the test runs due to this eddy current induced heat. If your design does not work, it could be the core material. I can not emphasize enough the importance of the proper core material. It can save you years of time and thousands of dollars. If we had only had the funding for at least laminated electrical steel we may have had a number of overunity machines at this time. Funding is so important with this type of research. You can't cut corners when working with magnetism, it will only take you to a dead end street.
See links > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_core
Also > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_permeability
Interesting note: Ultra high permeability materials The material with the highest magnetic permeability is Metglas Magnetic Alloy 2714A (Cobalt-based) [7] with a high frequency annealed permeability of 1,000,000 (Maximum DC Permeability (?)). Hydrogen annealed (pure iron - N5 grade) can have a permeability of 160,000 (?) but is very expensive.
Thanks,
Butch LaFonte
Birmingham, Alabama

Howdy,

All the information that I have on electromagnetic free energy devices indicates that steel should not be used, especially hard alloys.  The specifications call for soft iron, or pig iron.  Literally the most basic and vulnerable form of elemental iron.  The greater the permeability number the more the material BLOCKS magnetic flux.  This is why Mu Metal, and Permalloy is used in disk drives that use magnetic media, and in microwave ovens.  There is also another very interesting application which is a shaded pole AC motor.

Joseph Cater is right...

Howdy,

Well, I am going to have to disagree with you also.  The high permeability material allows flux to flow parallel on the surface of the material better, but is does not penetrate the material and cannot flow perpendicularly through the material.  It is common to use a solenoid configuration for a free energy inductor or transformer, so the high permeability material is literally useless.  This is where elemental iron shines through all the "high tech" solutions.  Iron is the ultimate magnetic material.  The high permeability material would work great for a toroidal inductor, but the average free energy researcher cannot afford a toroid made of mu metal or permalloy, so it is like unobtanium to them.  Now a slug made from scrap iron filings and epoxy in a solenoid configuration is an affordable, obtainable, with a realistic permeability.  This is where imagination takes over and one ups the scientific high techery...

Blessed Be Brother...