VIM-IC

Vacuum Investment Casting

The VIM-IC furnaces are used for investment casting or precision casting of superalloys.

The standard VIM-IC furnaces are modular and can be used for melt weights from 5-500 kg. Vertical and horizontal type furnaces can be offered depending on cast weight and mold dimensions. The solidification structure of the casting can be equiax (E) or, through the use of an additional mold heater, directionally solidified (DS) or single crystal (SC). The furnace can be built as combined furnace, thus customers can easily switch over from equiax to DS/SC mode and vice versa.

For equiax castings vertical furnaces without pit and single chamber furnaces are available as well.

If you have special requirement, ALD can offer customized concepts for E or DS/SC castings.

The VIM-IC is made for mass production for

  • Aviation industry – turbine blades, vanes
  • Power Generators – turbine blades
  • Automotive Industry – turbo charger wheel impellers
  • Medical/Chemical/Electronic Industry

Modular furnaces concepts for different sizes and process requirements

  • Easy operation by menu-driven furnace control in customer´s language
  • Repeatable castings by automatic sequences
  • Quality documentation by log files and process report
  • Less maintenance – only electrical and pneumatical drives
  • Induction and resistance mold heating (for DS/SC)
  • Fast conversion from E into DS/SC mode and vice versa
  • Improved mold filling and grain structure by centrifugal casting (for E)
  • High-efficient coaxial power cables and coaxial power feed-through
  • Crucible basket technique for fast crucible exchange

Beside the Bridgman process advanced DS/SC solidification processes like liquid metal cooling (LMC) are available.