The vacuum furnace range offered by Carbolite Gero includes vacuum chamber furnaces, vacuum hood furnaces, bottom loading furnaces, laboratory vacuum furnaces, and vacuum tube furnaces. Each furnace can be used with either a reactive gas or an inert gas. The majority of products in our vacuum furnace range are available with either metal, graphite, or ceramic insulation. On request, graphite models can be configured to safely operate at up to 3000°C.
Many different options are available for the vacuum furnaces range at the order stage, including advanced software, data loggers, and sophisticated digital controllers. These facilitate additional levels of control over the operation of the vacuum furnace and provide complete data recording capabilities. Furthermore in some cases different pumps, vacuum systems, and cooling systems can be provided in order to meet specific requirements.
All of our vacuum furnaces feature a robust construction and can provide rapid and highly consistent heating in a controlled atmosphere, making them ideal for numerous heavy duty industrial and laboratory applications.
Common applications of a vacuum furnace include brazing, sintering, annealing, degassing, drying, tempering, soldering, quenching, and hardening. A vacuum furnace can also be used for metal injection moulding (MIM) or ceramic inject moulding (CIM) as well as metallisation, siliconization, carbonisation, and other industrial processes.
Different vacuum furnaces will be best suited to different functions. Vacuum hood furnaces provide the highest possible purity while vacuum furnace models with bottom loading capabilities allow easy access to samples. Laboratory vacuum furnaces have a more compact design than other models, making them well suited for a research environment. Carbolite Gero vacuum tube furnaces are based on the according non-vacuum models, but modified and equipped with a purpose-built vacuum unit. Therefore, a large range of diameters and lengths are available. In the case of the HTRH-H2, Hydrogen atmospheres are possible as well.
A vacuum furnace enables heat treatment in vacuum. A distinction is made between cold and hot wall vacuum furnaces. Cold wall vacuum furnaces operate with a water-cooled vacuum recipient, which is kept cold during the entire heat treatment process. The heating elements are located inside this recipient. Hot wall vacuum furnaces on the other hand operate with heating elements located outside the vacuum-recipient (e.g., a ceramic or quartz tube) while the recipient is heated itself.
The maximum temperature of regular resistance-type heating elements in an air/oxidising environment is 1800°C. For temperatures above, a vacuum furnace must be used, and a non-oxidizing atmosphere must be applied. Vacuum furnaces allow temperatures up to 3000°C with resistance-type heating elements.
Many applications require vacuum heat treatment, for example vacuum soldering and brazing, vacuum annealing, sintering etc. In general, a vacuum furnace is required for any type of heat treatment in a defined, mostly non-oxidising, atmosphere. Additionally, it can also make sense to use a vacuum furnace for heat treatment with a defined oxygen concentration which is different from the air composition (e.g., 100% pure O2).
Of course, vacuum itself is a possible atmosphere for vacuum furnaces. Depending on the application, the vacuum level can be rough, fine, high, or even ultra-high vacuum. Additionally, as a vacuum furnace allows complete removal of the air atmosphere, it is also possible to work with various gases or mixtures, such as Argon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Carbon Monoxide, Helium etc.
Typically, graphite, molybdenum or tungsten heating elements are used in a (cold wall) vacuum furnace. Those elements possess low pressures even at high temperatures. In vacuum it is possible to achieve 2200°C, 1600°C and 2200°C respectively.
