ALD Vacuum Technologies GmbH products

In 1928 the first industrial scale vacuum induction melting and casting furnace was engineered and manufactured by ALD’s parent company and then commissioned in Hanau, Germany near today’s ALD headquarters. Since that time, a variety of VIM furnaces with capacities from 1 up to 30 t have been designed, engineered and delivered to leading specialty steel and alloy producers throughout the world. ALD’s systems in the VIM 100 – VIM 4000 product line use a state-of-the-art, industry proven design. ALD offers a broad range of accessories to tailor the VIM process and controls to meet each customer’s individual production requirements. The designs have proven valuable for low-cost production of special steels and super- alloys.

For the melting and remelting of Alloys (e.g. Titanium Alloys, Titanium Aluminides) which contain larger amounts of alloying elements with high vapor pressure that would evaporate under deep vacuum conditions, the plasma arc melting process (PAM) is the first choice. Using plasma arc melting, the metal is melted under inert gas atmosphere (usually Helium or Argon) in a pressure range between 400 – 1,200 mbar abs. The plasma arc torch column provides the heat source with maximum temperatures well above 15,000 K. Under these process conditions evaporation of alloying elements can be suppressed and complex alloy compositions can be produced.