  The magnetocaloric effect, that consists of adiabatic temperature changes in
a varying external magnetic field, appears not only when the amplitude is
changed, but in cases of anisotropic magnetic materials also when the direction
is varied. In this article we investigate the magnetocaloric effect
theoretically for the archetypical single molecule magnets Fe8 and Mn12 that
are rotated with respect to a magnetic field. We complement our calculations
for equilibrium situations with investigations of the influence of
non-equilibrium thermodynamic cycles.
