24 Foot Vacuum Furnace On-line

Less than one year after the initial plans were proposed, Solar Atmospheres has installed a 24 ‘ long x 84″ diameter VFS vacuum furnace at its new facility in Hermitage, PA (60 miles from Pittsburgh and Cleveland).

With a newly designed car-bottom loading system, the furnace is processing 50,000 lb loads. Two bar quenching is accomplished with nitrogen or helium gas running over speed with two 300 hp gas blowers from ABB variable speed motor drives.

Bob Hill, President of Solar Atmospheres Western PA, has been overseeing heat treating facilities for over 20 years and is very eager about the new possibilities this furnace offers manufacturers.  Vacuum heat treating parts and brazing assemblies up to 24 feet long is a new resource for industry.  In addition to having a load capacity up to 50,000 lbs, the furnace will enable new engineering and design possibilities for longer and larger components that require bright, clean results and precise temperature processing achieved in a vacuum furnace.

There have also been tremendous improvements in the cooling system.  The cooling rates achieved in the new furnace exceed anything we have seen in large furnace processing.  Operating temperature is to 2650° F with five zones of control meeting AMS 2750 specification, Class 1.

Solar has a number of years experience with vacuum heat treating in large furnaces.  Six, ten and twelve foot vacuum furnaces are used to stress relieve, harden, anneal or degass various weldment bars, tubing and other large loads.  A developing industrial application is the hydrogen degassing and annealing of titanium and other reactive metals in billet, plate or coil forms.  It was this market which provided the demand for the 24 foot furnace.