Vacuum Furnaces
A vacuum furnace is an enclosed structure that produces heat for industrial purposes. This type of heat treating process takes place in a vacuum, or airtight, enclosed structure. Vacuum furnaces can heat materials, typically metals, to very high temperatures and carry out processes such as brazing, sintering and heat treatment with high consistency and low contamination. Because vacuum chambers cannot be opened while the chamber is under vacuum, vacuum must be released from the chamber before the parts can be taken in for processing or taken out after processing.
Vacuum furnaces are ideal for processing parts for bright annealing, stress relieving, normalizing, tempering, degassing, and other industrial purposes in which high pressure cooling or quenching media is used. Typically, vacuum furnaces use low atmospheric pressure for heating.
The use of vacuum furnaces for heating applications provides many benefits. First, vacuum furnaces have the capability of controlling temperature within a small area. Because of their use of a vacuum, they also offer low contamination of the product by carbon, oxygen, and other gases. Vacuum furnaces also use quenching, providing quick cooling of the product. If chosen, the process can also be controlled by a computer in order to ensure metallurgical repeatability.
Important factors to consider when selecting a vacuum furnace are its pressure range, process temperature, chamber length, height, width, and tube outer diameter. Pressure range represents the range of pressure the furnace can run on, while process temperature is the range of temperatures the furnace employs. The length of the chamber is the length of the furnace. Height and width are measured using internal measurements of the furnace.