The application of vacuum muffle furnace in the metal industry

08-04-2025       Author: KJ technology

The vacuum muffle furnace is widely and crucially used in the metal industry. By combining vacuum environment with high temperature control, it significantly improves the performance and production quality of metal materials. The specific application scenarios and advantages are as follows:

1. Core application scenarios

High purity metal melting

Application areas: Melting of active metals such as titanium and zirconium, as well as preparation of high-purity metals (such as copper and silver with a purity of 99.99% or higher) for the electronics industry.

Technological advantages:

Vacuum degassing: In an environment with a vacuum degree of ≤ 10 ⁻ Pa, it effectively removes gas impurities such as hydrogen and oxygen from metals, reduces porosity, and improves density.

Reduce oxidation: Avoid metal reacting with oxygen at high temperatures to generate oxides, ensuring the intrinsic properties of the material.

Metal Heat Treatment and Surface Modification

Application areas:

Vacuum annealing: eliminates residual stresses generated by metal forging or cold working, and improves plasticity. For example, after vacuum annealing, the fatigue strength of automobile transmission shafts is increased by 25%, and the service life of machining tools is extended by 40%.

Vacuum carburizing/nitriding: Enhancing the surface hardness of metals in a carbon or nitrogen atmosphere. For example, after vacuum carburizing of the gear surface, the hardness reaches HRC60 or above, and the wear resistance is increased by three times.

Phase transformation strengthening: induce martensitic transformation through rapid temperature rise and fall (0-1000 ℃/min). For example, after this process, the surface hardness of high-end bearing steel reaches HRC62, and the contact fatigue life exceeds 10 cycles.

Technological advantages:

Accurate temperature control: The PID intelligent temperature control system achieves temperature fluctuations of ≤± 1 ℃, ensuring consistent heat treatment effects.

Atmosphere control: Supports inert gases (such as argon) or reducing atmospheres (such as hydrogen) to meet specific process requirements.

Powder metallurgy product sintering

Application areas: Preparation of hard alloys (such as tungsten cobalt alloys) and magnetic materials (such as neodymium iron boron permanent magnets).

Technological advantages:

Avoid oxidation: The vacuum environment prevents powder oxidation at high temperatures, reduces defects, and increases sintering density.

Promote densification: By high-temperature sintering, metallurgical bonding is formed between powder particles to improve material strength.

Synthesis of Metal Matrix Composite Materials (MMC)

Application areas: Preparation of aluminum based and magnesium based composite materials, such as carbon fiber reinforced aluminum based composite materials and silicon carbide particle reinforced magnesium based composite materials.

Technological advantages:

Preventing interface oxidation: The vacuum environment suppresses the interface oxidation between the matrix and the reinforcing phase (such as carbon fiber and silicon carbide particles), improving the bonding strength.

Promote infiltration: Enhance the wettability of the metal matrix to the reinforcing phase at high temperatures, improving material properties.

2. Industry Development Trends

Intelligent upgrade: Integrating IoT technology to achieve remote monitoring and real-time analysis of process data (such as automatic optimization of temperature time curves), improving production efficiency.

Green manufacturing: adopting low nitrogen oxide combustion technology to reduce exhaust emissions and meet environmental protection requirements.

Ultra high temperature expansion: Developing graphite heating elements with a maximum temperature of 3000 ℃ to meet the needs of silicon carbide fiber-reinforced ceramic matrix composites and other materials.

Miniature design: In response to laboratory requirements, a miniature vacuum muffle furnace with a volume of ≤ 0.1m ³ has been launched to reduce research costs.