aviation industry

A European machinery group will receive a vacuum furnace for hardening and tempering processes, and its design has been customized in order to meet the group’s need to harden aviation steel used as landing gear. The heat treatment solution will improve the process economy in European plants and is characterized, in part, by low energy consumption.

To meet this particular application, SECO/WARWICK engineers fitted the Vector® vacuum furnace with a non-standard system for subquenching with liquid nitrogen that enables the required quick cooling down of landing gear components. The solution has also been expanded with a vacuum system designed with a diffusion pump and is equipped with a directional cooling option and convection heating system with a specially designed fan. 

“This is already the fourth purchase order for a furnace from this product segment from this customer,” commented Maciej Korecki, VP of Business Segment for Vacuum Heat Treatment Furnaces at SECO/WARWICK, the sister company to North American heat treat supplier SECO/VACUUM. He also added that “The product solves the customer’s problem with the hardening of special aviation steel, significantly increases the capacity of the existing production line of this component, and also improves process parameters, since the current devices used by the customer are not fitted with a subquenching system using liquid nitrogen. It will certainly be one of the unique solutions completed this year.”