Solar installs all-metal hot zone heat treating furnace for aerospace/medical alloys
July 11, 2019
Source:
Solar Atmospheres, Souderton, Pa., recently installed another unique all-metal hot zone vacuum furnace at its facility in Souderton to increase its capacity for processing sensitive materials such as PH stainless, nickel-chrome-base superalloys, titanium, and ferritic and austenitic stainless steels. This is Solar’s third all-metal hot zone furnace installation for its climate-controlled room.
The unique placement of isolation valves, an all-metal moly/stainless steel hot zone, and a stainless steel chamber allows this furnace to attain the level of cleanliness mandated by the demanding aerospace and medical markets. The ability to achieve vacuum levels lower than 5 x 10-6 Torr produces clean, bright results without contamination. Additionally, this furnace incorporates Solar Manufacturing’s latest SolarVac Polaris HMI control system for complete process automation.
Accordong to Jamie Jones, President of Solar Atmospheres, “The increasing demands for cleanliness levels in critical aerospace and medical applications, and the growth in these markets, paved the way for Solar Atmospheres to add capacity through this investment.â€
www.solaratm.com
Solar Atmospheres, Souderton, Pa., recently installed another unique, all-metal hot zone vacuum furnace at its facility in Souderton to increase its capacity for processing sensitive materials such as PH stainless, nickel-chrome-base superalloys, titanium, and ferritic and austenitic stainless steels.
Continue reading
Wisconsin Oven ships top-flow conveyor oven to cure CPIG on plastic housings for electronics
July 10, 2019
Source:
Wisconsin Oven, East Troy, announces that it has shipped an electrically heated top-flow conveyor oven to a global machinery manufacturer for curing calcium phosphate invert glass-ceramic (CPIG) material on plastic housings for electronic components. The conveyor oven has a maximum oven operating temperature of 200°C and work chamber dimensions of 28 inches wide x 21 feet long x 9 inches high. The oven features a continuous chain-style conveyor system.
The oven has sufficient capacity to heat 1000 pounds of steel and 600 pounds of plastic per hour from 21 to 150°C. To maximize heating rates and temperature uniformity of the product, the oven features top-down airflow. It includes an 8600 CFM @ 10 HP recirculation blower, and a 400 CFM @ ½ HP exhaust blower. It includes a Digital Eurotherm 3504 temperature controller and Digital Watlow PM6L oven high-limit controller.
“This oven is a duplicate of a previous oven that this customer purchased for the same application, curing plastic housings for electronic components,†says Gary Hanson, Senior Application Engineer.
www.wisoven.com
Wisconsin Oven, East Troy, announces that it has shipped an electrically heated top-flow conveyor oven to a global machinery manufacturer for curing calcium phosphate invert glass-ceramic (CPIG) material on plastic housings for electronic components.
Continue reading
EFD Induction’s Hardline Hybrid horizontal hardening system designed for bars, shafts
Source:
EFD Induction, Madison Heights, Mich., offers the HardLine Hybrid horizontal heat treatment system, which is said to deliver short cycle times, reproducibility, and reliability for heat treating bars and shafts. It is designed to handle a wide range of workpiece types and dimensions, with lengths from 50 to 600 millimeters and diameters of 5 to 50 millimeters.
“The HardLine Hybrid essentially gives you two machines in one,†says Bogdan Cerchez, Director for Product Development IHM. “As a hybrid, it combines a pusher system – a so-called HP – and a continuous loading system – an HC – into a single machine.†The system is modular, so the same machine can be used as HC only, HP only, or have both HC and HP assemblies installed, essentially providing two functionalities in the same machine.
The high scanning speed and the quick loading and unloading systems of the HardLine Hybrid work together to ensure high throughput rates, and the machine can be fitted with various options to adapt to specific process requirements.
www.efd-induction.com
EFD Induction, Madison Heights, Mich., offers the HardLine Hybrid horizontal heat treatment system, which is said to delivers short cycle times, reproducibility, and reliability for heat treating bars and shafts.
Continue reading
Engineered YSZ powders, advanced equipment enable improved thermal barrier coatings
July 5, 2019
Source:
Engineers from Treibacher Industrie AG, Austria, presented a discussion titled “Engineered YSZ Powders for High Power Plasma Spraying of Thermal Barrier Coatings†at the ASM International ITSC 2019 conference. Air plasma spraying of yttria stabilized zirconia for thermal barrier coatings has been used in gas turbines since the 1980's. Current YSZ powders were originally developed together with the plasma spray equipment then available. In the decades since, the demands for ever-higher performance have pushed coating equipment and materials to the limit to achieve goals such as higher porosity levels, lower conductivity, and longer lifetime.
In recent years, high-power plasma spray equipment has become available that allows greater efficiency and materials throughput than legacy equipment. In order to utilize the extra capabilities of these newer systems, a new generation of YSZ powders has been developed with properties and structures engineered for the final coating requirements.
This study looked at the comparison between the newly developed powders and conventional powders used to produce a range of TBC types; from dense segmented coatings to high porosity coatings. The coating process with high energy plasma equipment will be evaluated for deposition efficiency as well as deposition rate. Finally, the thermal barrier coatings are to be evaluated for their microstructure and thermal properties, as well as cyclic lifetime at high temperature.
Authors: Dr. Nicholas Curry, Mr. Matthias Leitner, Mr. Karl Korner, Treibacher Industrie AG, Althofen, Austria
www.treibacher.com/en
Engineers from Treibacher Industrie AG, Austria, presented a discussion titled “Engineered YSZ Powders for High Power Plasma Spraying of Thermal Barrier Coatings” at the ASM International ITSC 2019 conference.
Continue reading
High-speed laser cladding enables surface speeds up to 400 m/min with less heat
Source:
Scientists from Höganäs, Sweden, presented “High-Speed Laser Cladding For Innovative Applications†at ASM International’s ITSC 2019 conference in Japan. Laser cladding has been available for about 40 years, but the process has reached a more general industrial acceptance fairly recently. Other coating processes such as PTA, thermal spray, GMAW, etc., are well known and have a lower investment cost than lasers.
The benefits of laser cladding include lower heat input, lower dilution, less material consumption, and overall better performance. With the last decade’s development of high-power laser sources from 10 µm wavelength CO2 lasers to high-power solid-state lasers with wavelengths around one micron, improved process efficiency, lower costs, and smaller footprints have been achieved. As a result, laser cladding has rapidly become more interesting for a wide variety of applications.
The most novel development in surface coating is high-speed laser cladding with surface speeds up to 400 m/min, depending on properties of the powder and substrate. The high process speed, low heat input and minimal dilution with the substrate opens up for new applications and material combinations previously not possible with conventional laser cladding.
This paper showed some of the successful applications and material combinations the authors have achieved with high-speed laser cladding.
Authors: Dr. Conny M Lampa, Mr. Ivan Smirnov, Mrs. Ingrid Hauer Miller, Höganäs AB, Höganäs, Sweden
www.hoganas.com
Scientists from Höganäs, Sweden, presented “High-speed laser cladding for innovative applications” at ASM International’s ITSC 2019 conference in Japan.
Continue reading
Spray Tips: Bonding through mechanical interlocking
Source:
Mechanical interlocking has been viewed historically as the main mechanism of thermal spray coating adhesion. Mechanical interlocking, as illustrated in Fig. 10, can play a part in coating adhesion and cohesion when the surfaces being coated have features that allow molten material to flow into and fill negative relief, or where the part has negative relief, as with shafts.
In this case, the bond between the impacting particles and the surface is established largely through the impact of particles that flow and solidify around the substrate surface asperities. Substrate asperities with negative relief can be formed prior to coating by grit blasting and other mechanical surface preparation techniques, or by process-induced irregularities on the actual coating surface.
This information is from ASM Handbooks Online, Vol. 5A Thermal Spray Technology, Coating Structures, Properties, and Materials. To find this information (subscription required), click on the link below and scroll down to Fig. 10.
https://dl.asminternational.org/books/book/12/chapter/132400/Coating-Structures-Properties-and-Materials
Mechanical interlocking has been viewed historically as the main mechanism of thermal spray coating adhesion.
Continue reading
ESA selects Siemens and Sonaca to develop additive manufacturing for aerospace parts
July 3, 2019
Source:
Siemens Digital Industries Software, Plano, Texas, announces that it has been selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop metal additive manufacturing designs for aerospace structures. The applications will leverage Siemens' end-to-end software solution for industrial additive manufacturing, which combines generative engineering, topology optimization, predictive analytics, process simulation, build preparation, and production execution.
The two-year project, named Design4AM, is based on a strong collaboration between Siemens and the Sonaca Group, a Belgian company that specializes in aerospace structures. The project is to receive financial support from ESA and the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo).
Design4AM will leverage the Siemens Digital Innovation Platform with the support of Sonaca's experience in space applications, manufacturing features, material and process testing, and numerical methods for the validation of the chain. Siemens' NX software and Simcenter software enable engineers to explore a wide range of design concepts in an automated closed-loop process that takes into consideration engineering performance, manufacturing process, and operation cost requirements.
These tools can account for manufacturing constraints such as thermo-mechanical part distortion, the structural part orientation in the building chamber, and the design of supporting structures. The integrated software environment can shorten the part conceptual design and optimization process, helping enable higher performance structures to be manufactured.
"The Siemens and Sonaca partnership combines the power of a leading additive manufacturing software solution with the expertise from a leading aerospace manufacturer," said Pedro Romero Fernandez, Sonaca General Manager Space BU. "With our deep aerospace knowledge and Siemens' software technologies, engineers will be able to explore hundreds of design options in a fraction of the normal time. Then we will virtually test them against a variety of physical conditions to arrive at the best design to 3D print correctly the first time."
https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/global/en/our-story/newsroom/
www.sonaca.com
Siemens Digital Industries Software, Plano, Texas, announces that it has been selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop metal additive manufacturing designs for aerospace structures.
Continue reading
Sciaky to partner with Albert & Duval and Airbus for 3D printing of titanium aircraft parts
July 2, 2019
Source:
Sciaky Inc., Chicago, announces that it has entered into a research and development initiative to couple high-powered closed-die forging with Sciaky’s electron beam additive manufacturing (EBAM) to develop new processes for producing titanium alloy aircraft parts.
Sciaky will partner with Aubert & Duval and Airbus, driven by the Saint Exupéry Institute for Research in Technology (IRT). The Production Engineering laboratory of the National School of Engineering in Tarbes, France, will serve as an academic partner for this project, also known as the Metallic Advanced Materials for Aeronautics (MAMA) project.
In this first phase, the project has a global funding of just under $4.8 million, of which 50% is supported by the French State as part of the “Investing in the Future†program (PIA - Programme Investissement d’Avenir). The other 50% is funded by its industrial partners.
As the most widely scalable metal additive manufacturing solution in the industry (in terms of work envelope), Sciaky’s EBAM systems can produce parts ranging from 8 inches to 19 feet in length. EBAM is also the fastest deposition process in the metal additive manufacturing market, with gross deposition rates up to 25 pounds of metal per hour.
EBAM brings quality and control together with IRISS – the Interlayer Real-time Imaging and Sensing System, which is the only real-time adaptive control system in the metal 3D printing market that can sense and digitally self-adjust metal deposition with precision and repeatability. This innovative closed-loop control is the primary reason that Sciaky’s EBAM 3D printing process delivers consistent part geometry, mechanical properties, microstructure, and metal chemistry, from the first part to the last.
Aubert & Duval, a subsidiary of the Alloys division of the Eramet group, is a metallurgy expert company and one of the world leaders in high-performance steels, superalloys, titanium, and aluminum. Aubert & Duval designs and develops advanced metallurgical solutions in the form of closed-die-forged and forged parts, long products, and metal powders for projects in the most demanding industries: aeronautics, energy, defense, nuclear, and medical.
The Technological Research Institute (IRT) Saint Exupéry, is an accelerator of science, technological research, and tech transfer to the aeronautics, space, and embedded systems industries for the development of innovative solutions that are safe, robust, certifiable, and sustainable.
www.sciaky.com
www.aubertduval.com
Sciaky Inc., Chicago, announces that it has entered into a research and development initiative to couple high-powered closed die forging with Sciaky’s electron beam additive manufacturing (EBAM) to develop new processes for manufacturing titanium alloy aircraft parts.
Continue reading
Linde to supply ExxonMobil with integrated manufacturing complex in Singapore
Source:
The Linde Group, Munich, announces that it has signed a long-term agreement with ExxonMobil Asia Pacific to support the latest multi-billion dollar expansion of the company's integrated manufacturing complex in Singapore. This will be the single largest sale of gas contract in the history of the newly merged Linde and of its legacy companies.
Linde will invest $1.4 billion to expand its existing gasification complex at Jurong Island, integrating it with ExxonMobil's project to produce and supply additional hydrogen and synthesis gas. The project will include building and operating four additional gasifiers and a 1200 metric-ton-per-day air separation plant, as well as Linde's proprietary downstream gas processing units and sulfur recovery plants. Linde's gasification complex will produce and supply hydrogen and synthesis gas to ExxonMobil by upgrading the heavy residue feedstock from its new facilities.
Linde will also invest in a dedicated set of pipelines for the transfer of feedstocks and products between ExxonMobil and Linde facilities. Upon completion, the investment will also supply hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and synthesis gas to other customers on Jurong Island and quadruple Linde's present capacity.
Linde's Engineering division will design and build the new facility. Construction is expected to start in the second half of 2019, with start-up anticipated in 2023.
www.linde.com
The Linde Group, Munich, announces that it has signed a long-term agreement with ExxonMobil Asia Pacific to support the latest multi-billion dollar expansion of the company’s integrated manufacturing complex in Singapore.
Continue reading
Carpenter to provide soft magnetic alloys for electric aircraft engine demonstrators
Source:
Carpenter Technology, Philadelphia, announced at the Paris Air Show its involvement with multiple OEMs to help with electric aircraft development by providing advanced soft magnetic alloy expertise and ultra-efficient electrical components for R&D and demonstrator motors and engines. The goal is to construct lighter-weight, longer-lasting electric propulsion systems. Along with its partners, Carpenter Technology’s goal is to enable development of the highest power-density motors available.
Carpenter Technology’s portfolio covers a range of solutions from maximizing magnetic performance to optimally balancing yield strength and core loss in rotating components. Already a leading industry producer of soft magnetic materials, Carpenter Technology recently announced a $100 million investment in a precision strip mill to expand its soft magnetic capabilities to serve aerospace and other industries looking to realize the benefits of electric power.
“As the industry leader in electric propulsion material solutions, we are well positioned to support the development of electric systems to power the aircraft of tomorrow,†says Marshall Akins, Carpenter Technology’s Vice President, Aerospace Markets.
Photo shows a Siemens electric aircraft engine from 2016.
www.cartech.com
Carpenter Technology, Philadelphia, announced at the Paris Air Show its involvement with multiple OEMs to help with electric aircraft development by providing advanced soft magnetic alloy expertise and ultra-efficient electrical components for R&D and demonstrator motors and engines.
Continue reading 