A look back at the most-clicked posts of 2015 shows a range of interests among readers, from machine safety (which was the most clicked story) to news about the rare-earth magnet market, to selecting the best cable for VFD drives. If you missed any of these stories, here’s your chance to get caught up on them.

(Click on the headline to read the full story.)

1) 5 myths about safety in machinery

The motion controls and drives team at Kollmorgen brings machine builders up to speed on what they need to know about new safety directives, and the five most common myths about them.

2) Arduinos and cheap controllers meet high-performance motion

Senior editor Lisa Eitel talks with Abe Amirana, director at Teknic Inc., and Teknic’s Brendan Flosenzier, applications engineer, about the evolution of Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, and other low-cost microcontrollers and minicomputers now finding use in industrial motion-control applications.

3) Problems VFDs cause and cable types that help solve them

Kevin Marston, Managing Director at SAB NORTH AMERICA, explains how VFD chopped dc square-wave output signals affect and interact with motors and surrounding equipment, and how cables can help protect many components against the signals’ more detrimental properties.

4) The push and pull of rare-earth magnets 

In the industrial world, modern, high-power electric motors rely on rare-earth magnetic materials for their power density edge. This piece looked at some of the trends in the rare-earth magnetic material market and what that could mean for designers of electric motors.

5) How to prevent false brinelling in rolling-element bearings

Charles E. Harris, Partner at Plymouth Machine Integration LLC, looks at false brinelling, a kind of damage from fretting — wavy, chipped, or corroded damage on metal contact surfaces of power-transmission devices subject to wearing from repeated surface motion.