Vacuum Precision Investment Casting Furnaces
Vacuum Precision Investment Casting Furnaces
Vacuum Precision Investment Casting (VPIC) furnaces are essential for producing advanced superalloy components in industries such as aerospace, power generation, automotive, and biomedical. These furnaces use the 'lost wax' process to create ceramic molds filled with pre-alloyed metal under vacuum conditions.
VPIC furnaces feature a two-chamber design: one for melting and one for mold handling. The melting chamber includes an induction coil and crucible, while the mold chamber facilitates loading and unloading of molds, ensuring continuous operation without breaking the vacuum.
- Fast Melting Technology: Optimized induction power supplies enhance melting power.
- Rapid Exchange Melt Coils: Coils can be changed quickly without internal electrical connections.
- Automatic Charging & Liner Removal: Automated systems ensure consistent ingot charging and liner removal.
- Pouring Consistency: Translational tilt pour systems provide accurate molten metal stream entry into molds.
- Automatic Baffle Clamping: Enables baffle exchange without cooling the heater or opening the chamber.
Available in vertical, horizontal, or pitless vertical configurations, these furnaces feature rapid exchange melt coils, high-speed mold transfer, and precision mold withdrawal systems, equipped with large capacity vacuum systems and automated controls.
Modern VPIC furnaces are fully automated with PLC and PC-based systems, allowing operators to select casting recipes and perform operations automatically. The SCADA system ensures data acquisition and management for consistency and quality control.
VPIC furnaces are used for high-performance castings in various markets. Their design allows efficient mold handling and uninterrupted melting, maximizing production rates. Vertical furnaces are favored for their compact design and ease of mold manipulation.
The document provides a detailed description of VPIC furnaces, focusing on their design, specifications, and applications in industries such as aerospace, automotive, and biomedical. It highlights the advantages of using directionally solidified (DS) and single-crystal (SC) castings for high-temperature applications due to superior mechanical properties.
Furnaces are available in vertical, horizontal, and pitless vertical configurations, featuring a two-chamber design with a melt chamber and a mold chamber separated by a vacuum isolation valve. Key features include rapid exchange melt coils, automatic charging and liner removal, and precision mold withdrawal systems.
Modern furnaces are fully automated with PLC and PC-based control systems, ensuring consistent casting quality. The SCADA system provides data acquisition, trending, and melt report generation, integrated with factory networks for data management.
The document outlines technological advancements such as fast melting technology, translational tilt pour systems, and automatic baffle clamping systems, enhancing productivity and flexibility in casting operations.
The document lists specifications for various furnace models, including cast weight capacities, maximum mold diameters and heights, and standard melting power supplies, customizable to meet specific customer requirements.
The furnaces are extensively used for manufacturing high-performance castings in sectors like aerospace, industrial gas turbines, automotive, and biomedical industries.
Catalog excerpts
An Inductotherm Croup Company Vacuum Prcision Investment Casting Furnaces
Open the catalog to page 1
VPIC— The Process The production of advanced superalloy components for applications in aerospace, power generation, automotive, biomedical, chemical or recreational uses is accomplished in a Vacuum Precision Investment Casting Furnace. Conventional processing produces castings having equiaxed, or randomly orientated, grain structures. Using the principles of the ‘lost wax’ process, a ceramic mold is prepared and heated prior to casting. A measured quantity of pre-alloyed metal is then rapidly re-melted and poured into the mold under vacuum. Directionally solidified (DS) and single-crystal (SC)...
Open the catalog to page 2
An Inductotherm Croup Company Vacuum Prcision Investment Casting Furnaces VPIC is extensively used for the manufacture of high performance castings in the Aerospace, Industrial Gas Turbine, Automotive and Biomdical markets. The two chamber design features a melt chamber, containing the induction melting coil, with a vacuum isolation valve separating the melt chamber from the mold chamber. The mold chamber incorporates the mold transfer mechanism system allowing for the melt down of the charge in the melt chamber independent of the ceramic mold handling and transfer operations. Some features and...
Open the catalog to page 3
In Equiax casting furnaces, no special consideration is given to controlling the solidification conditions in the mold from the furnace design. Solidification is controlled by the customers mold design and thermal insulation placed around the mold. The resulting casting has a crystalline structure with randomly oriented grains. With the melting chamber under vacuum, the two-chamber design allows a pre-heated ceramic mold to be loaded into the mold chamber and the chamber rapidly evacuated. The interconnecting valve between the two chambers is then opened and the mold transported by either a vertical...
Open the catalog to page 4
An Inductotherm Croup Company DS / SC Casting Furnaces Directionally solidified and single crystal castings have also become common place in advanced turbine technology due to their improved mechanical properties at very high temperature service. Furnaces to cast these components have additional features employed in their design to exert a high level of control over the solidification process in the casting. Controlled solidification furnaces are in general appearance similar to the vertically orientated equiax furnace. However, in addition to the induction melting coil, the upper melting chamber...
Open the catalog to page 5
Controls and Automation Historically, vacuum melting furnaces were essentially manually operated and it was not uncommon to have significant variances in product quality depending on the operators involved. Today, PLC and PC based supervision control systems have fully automated the VPIC furnace and operators merely have to select an appropriate ‘menu’ for the cast to be performed. All furnace operations can then be performed automatically, thus maintaining consistency between casts. All Consarc furnace installations are supplied with a fully integrated and interlocked control system for safe...
Open the catalog to page 6
An Inductotherm Croup Company Latest Technologies The following are a slection of some design features we have developed that are available to customers: Fast melting technology The productivity of an equiax furnace is limited only by the rate at which the base charge material can be melted. With the assistance of electromagnetic modeling, induction power supplies can be designed with the melting power KW maximized for a given range of melt capacities and charge sizes. Rapid exchange melt coils The time required to exchange melt coils is also a detriment to productivity. Consarc rapid exchange...
Open the catalog to page 7
For more information visit www.consarc.com. CONSARC CORPORATION 100 Indel Avenue P.O. Box 156 Rancocas, New Jersey 08073 Phone: +1 (609) 267-8000 Fax: +1 (609) 267-1366 E-mail: [email protected] www.consarc.com CONSARC ENGINEERING LIMITED 9 Woodside Eurocentral Holytown, North Lanarkshire ML14XL Scotland,United Kingdom Phone: +44 (0)1698 730430 Fax: +44 (0)1698 730431 E-mail: [email protected] www.consarceng.com
Open the catalog to page 8All CONSARC catalogs and technical brochures
VIM8 Pages
VPIC4 Pages
ESR8 Pages
VAR8 Pages
Vacuum Cap Furnaces4 Pages
