VAC AERO provides custom furnace designs and process capabilities to suit your specific requirements.

In addition to standard vacuum heat treating and brazing furnaces, VAC AERO also manufactures custom vacuum systems for a wide variety of special processing applications. VAC AERO’s skilled team of engineers works closely with the customer from concept through design, final manufacture and installation. VAC AERO designs and builds standard Gas Quench furnaces for maximum durability, reliability and trouble-free operation and provides an outstanding level of training, field and technical support based on decades of commercial heat treating experience.

by J.E. Pritchard & R. Laub

When joining aluminum for aerospace electronics, brazing often is the most practical choice for creating a continuous all-metal joint interface.

Because of its light weight and excellent thermal conductivity, aluminum often is the material of choice for assemblies that house or cool airborne electronics. Aluminum’s properties are particularly important in combat aircraft. Weight minimization becomes a major design consideration for many components going into these aircraft. Thermal conductivity is especially important in the electronics packages because of the heat problems created by the dense packing of powerful systems in limited spaces. The complex aluminum enclosures, chassis and heat dissipators used in military avionics systems often are manufactured from numerous individual components, which must then be joined.

Because of its light weight and good thermal conductivity, aluminum is often the material of choice for assemblies that house or cool electronics. These complex assemblies often are manufactured from numerous individual components that must be joined. There are many ways to join aluminum including mechanical fastening (screws, rivets, etc.), adhesive bonding, welding and brazing. The selection of a joining process must be based on a careful analysis of the service requirements and the materials involved.

Building a Lean Supply Chain

Lean shouldn’t stop with your company; to be truly lean, you must reach beyond your shop floor.

Companies of all sizes, shapes, and descriptions are attempting to implement lean manufacturing. As a company becomes lean, however, it inevitably runs into constraints imposed by its suppliers and customers, the adjacent nodes of the supply chain in which it operates. The logical next step to becoming lean internally is to try to spread the lean philosophy outward to those immediate trading partners. Sometimes doing so can bring significant improvements, especially when a large company is influencing one or more of its smaller suppliers. At other times it doesn’t work so well, such as when a small machine shop attempts to influence a much larger raw-material supplier.

The hot zone is perhaps the most critical feature of a vacuum furnace in terms of its affect on furnace performance and operating cost. There are a variety of hot zone designs and the choice of a design should be based on a careful analysis of specific processing applications. Most vacuum-furnace hot zones consist of four major components: the heating elements and the details on which they are mounted; the insulation package (or heat shields); a surrounding structure that supports the heating elements and insulation package; and a hearth that supports the load during processing. By Jeff Pritchard – VAC AERO International Inc., Ontario, Canada

Metal matrix composites are becoming increasingly popular for industrial applications as diverse as  aerospace, automotive and electronics. The composites consist of an alloy matrix reinforced with ceramic particles to enhance mechanical properties. Aluminum alloys are especially popular as a matrix material. 

VAC AERO’s latest advancement in vacuum furnace controls is a hybrid system based on the Honeywell HC 900 controller for mechanical and thermal functions integrated with Honeywell Plantscape Vista for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA). Operator interface is provided through a large, colour touchscreen. Using this system, process information is accessible by operators at the furnace and by process engineers via the network. This provides comprehensive control and monitoring capabilities for higher productivity, reduced costs and increased quality.

Click here for more information on our HC 900 Control System

The Dayton Process BV cleaning system is a commercially viable system that was first patented in 1980.  The system is used to remove service oxides from industrial and aero engine turbine components in order to facilitate weld and braze repair.

High strength steels based on the 43XX series are commonly used for aircraft landing gear components because of their desirable mechanical properties; these alloys are usually heat treated by quenching in oil from the hardening temperature, then tempered. During hardening, internal stresses created from the thermal shock of direct oil quenching almost always cause some degree of distortion in the heat treated component. Interrupted quenching techniques – such as ausbay quenching offer good potential for reducing quench distortion. However, due to the difficulty of machining these alloys in the hardened condition, machining allowances must be minimized. By Jeff Pritchard of VAC AERO International Inc., Oakville, Ontario, Canada.

Vacuum heat treatment offers an alternative method to traditional salt-bath and controlledatmosphere furnace hardening techniques for high strength steels, such as AISI 4340M and 300M. However, heat treaters must be prudent when choosing between oil and gas quenching for vacuum hardening of high strength steels, because each process has its advantages and disadvantages. High strength steel alloys, such as 4340M, 300M, and others, are most commonly used in the manufacture of landing gear components. These alloys are hardened and tempered to produce ultimate tensile strengths exceeding 280 ksi (1,930 MPa). By Jeff Pritchard and Scott Rush – VAC AERO International Inc., Oakville, Ontario, Canada