Bottom Loading Vacuum Furnaces

January 29/2020 we had the news item below about bottom loading vacuum furnaces and at the time we promised more details to come. We can now share with you that these furnaces are located at Stack Metallurgical in Portland, Oregon, USA and they were provided by furnace manufacturer Ipsen. The first was installed in 2016 and it’s twin in 2018-needless to say what you are looking at is a multi million dollar installation. In this photo we see from the left Gord Montgomery, Nels Plough, President, Craig Beaumier, VP, Sales & Marketing and Mike Deaner, Maintenance Manager (more about Mike and Stack later).

“Bottom Loading (Vertical) Vacuum Furnaces;  It would be interesting to know what % of new vacuum furnaces built each year are bottom loading (vertical) as opposed to horizontal loading. It is certainly very much in the minority as they are largely relegated to the aerospace industry and seldom seen in other vacuum hardening applications such as hardening of dies or tool steels. Our guess would be 5% possibly as high as 10% of the total worldwide market but we emphasize that is just a guess on our part. Having said that we have this photo of a really impressive bottom loading vacuum furnace installation we just saw in person. What you are looking at are two bottom loading vacuum furnaces with working dimensions of 60″ X 60″, 6 bar quenching, each with a capacity of 8,000 pounds and both installed within the past 3 years. More to come.”