Isostatic Argon gas forging of castings

In a little corner of North East Derbyshire just 3 miles from the border of Sheffield a high tech company is  working their magic with metal. Have you ever picked up your pint pot and noticed a bubble inside the glass base ? Imagine if that was a casting, indeed a critical casting for the aerospace industry. It would be rejected and probably remelted to start again.

All is not lost, providing the bubble has no link to the outer surface then we can remove it without the remelting costs. YES remove it. In fact we do this every day of the week on a routine basis with Aluminium, Copper, Titanium, Stainless Steel, Superalloys, Tungsten Carbide and Ceramics.

We use a modern day forging process, no old fashioned hammer forges here. We use a natural element, ARGON ( The Earth's atmosphere contains 0.94% argon ) Yes ARGON gas is used under extremely high pressure, together with temperatures relevant to the material being treated. Pressures of up to 30,000 psi which equates to 13 tons of squeezing pressure per square inch, combine this with the metal in its plastic state then pores are diffused out. The casting suffers no distortion or alteration in shape unless there are serious issues, surface dimples will show that sub surface porosity has been cured giving a far superior sealing surface for valve gaskets.

Before
micro porosity before treatment
Before

 

After
micro porosity after  treatment
After
Surface Connected porosity will remain but high value castings can be encapsulated
( surrounded by a fabricated can and sealed under vacuum ) and then treated to removed the surface connected porosity.



 

Eliminates porosity in castings or sintered parts.
Consolidates encapsulated powders to produce fully dense
materials for the manufacture of simple billets and complex NNS parts.
Bonds different materials to form unique, cost-effective components.

Below is an example of what the process can achieve.
A true life example where a 30 mm dia hole was closed using our process.

Obviously this is an extreme example to show the strength of the process, distortion will occur with this much material to fill.
Porosity normally appears in minute form so distortion would not occur
If you are interested in or have a problem with
removing porosity
creating powder billets
joining 2 dissimilar metals
low pressure diffusion bonding
near net shape castings from powder
stellite hard facing of large subsea oil valves

then please use the contact form below

Your name

Company

your email address

Please give a brief summary

email littlemesters