This course is part of the The Thermal Thermal Academy

Below are a set of links to articles from our Engineering and Mechanical Systems brands, including Engineering News-Record, . These articles provide in-depth analysis of specific projects, with photos, drawings, specifications, detailed descriptions, and design solutions. Click on each link below, read the article then complete the quiz to earn your credit and certificate of completion.

A vacuum furnace is a type of furnace that can heat materials, typically metals, to very high temperatures and carry out processes such as brazing, sintering and heat treatment with high consistency and low contamination. This course looks at the trends, applications and general process of vacuum heat treatment to show how it works and why it has become a favored technology.

Advantages of Vacuum Heat Treatment for Tool Steels Part 1
The heat treatment of tool steels (and any other steel heat-treatment procedure) relies on a given set of metallurgical principles. This article looks at the technology processes that vacuum heat treatment makes possible.
David Pye

Advantages of Vacuum Heat Treatment for Tool Steels Part 2
The heat treatment of tool steels (and any other steel heat-treatment procedure) relies on a given set of metallurgical principles. The second part of this article looks at how vacuum heat treatment has advantages for hot-work tools such as forging dies, shot sleeves, aluminum die-casting dies, magnesium die-casting dies and other hot-work applications.
David Pye

The Advantages of Heat Treating Metals Following Additive Manufacturing
The additive-manufacturing (AM) process involves turning 3-D CAD files on computers into finished products layer by layer. What happens after the printing phase has concluded also matters and recent testing has provided essential information regarding the role that vacuum heat treating plays in minimizing contamination and ensuring that components perform properly.
Alessandro Fiorese

Technology Trends in Vacuum Heat Treating: Processes and Applications
Vacuum thermal processing is vital for automotive and aerospace component manufacturers due to industry demands for the highest possible quality. Brazing and surface treatment are two process areas where vacuum technology is used.
Daniel H. Herring

Multiple-Chamber Vacuum Furnaces Provide Vacuum Advantages with Energy Savings
Multiple-chamber vacuum furnaces combine the advantages of vacuum processing with energy and maintenance cost savings. While early vacuum furnace designs began as single-chamber technology in which the heating and cooling required in a typical cycle were performed in the same chamber provided a cost-effective design, dueling and sometimes completely incompatible features necessary for optimum heating and optimum cooling have made multi-chamber furnaces desirable.
Benjamin T. Bernard

Vacuum Aluminum Brazing: What Matters Most
Vacuum aluminum brazing is done in a specific work environment utilizing sophisticated controls to ensure fast pumping, low parts per million (PPM) of oxygen and exceptional temperature uniformity combined in one synergistically designed vacuum furnace system. This article looks at the important details of this process.
Craig Moller and Jim Grann

Photo Courtesy of SECO/VACUUM