Solar Manufacturing ships high temperature sintering furnace

SOUDERTON, USA: Solar Manufacturing Inc. recently completed the shipment of a high temperature sintering vacuum furnace to an industry leader in the design, development and production of advanced specialty metal components for the aerospace and defense industries. This custom furnace, a model HFL-5748-2EQ with additional graphite felt hot zone insulation, is capable of an operating temperature of 1800° C.

Solar Manufacturing designs and manufactures heat treating and brazing furnaces with a focus on energy efficiency and durability. “Our customer needed a robust vacuum furnace to sinter heavy tungsten alloys at very high temperatures. We demonstrated that our vacuum furnaces can achieve high performance operation with low cost-of-ownership through the use of state-of-the-art materials,” said Pete Reh, vice president of sales.

The working dimensions of the hot zone measure 36″ wide X 36″ high X 48″ deep. Due to the extremely high maximum temperature this end user desired and the need for superior temperature uniformity, the hot zone is super insulated with eight (8) layers of 0.5″ thick high purity graphite felt insulation for superior energy efficiency.

The insulation pack is protected by a hot face of 0.040″ thick Flex Shield, a durable, flexible carbon fiber reinforced graphite foil. Thin graphite heating elements are mounted cylindrically in the hot zone and divided into multiple trim zones. The weight capacity of the graphite hearth is 2,000 pounds.

Solar Manufacturing’s state-of-the-art, interactive control system, the SolarVac 3000, will perform monitoring and control. The external gas quenching system utilizes a high-capacity copper heat exchanger, 150 HP drive motor and a radial blade fan for high velocity gas quenching through unique “forward tapered” graphite nozzles.

The chamber’s front door features a pneumatically operated, locking ring closure to facilitate positive pressure quench to 15 psig (2 bar). A 20″ Varian diffusion pump allows for high vacuum performance of 1 x 10-5 Torr.