The Chinese alloy specialist, based in Xiamen, China, is a major producer of cemented carbide products, tungsten-alloy parts, and tungsten and tungsten carbide powders. It is one of the biggest players in the cemented carbide market and already runs several sinter HIP furnaces from ALD.
The furnaces supplied are the VKPgr model, which provides high-pressure sintering with up to 100 bar argon-gas pressure for producing cemented carbide parts for wear and cutting-tool applications.
The VKPgr furnace combines the three main process steps in the hard metal production. In the first process cycle, the cemented carbide parts are at first de-waxed. Next the components are vacuum sintered at temperatures of about 1400°C. In the final step, the components are compacted under high gas pressure to achieve a porous free material structure. The high pressure compacting step helps create high mechanical properties in the cemented carbide components, making them suitable for manufacture as drills or cutters.
The VKPgr has one single furnace which performs up to four different dewaxing processes, a special graphite felt insulation with long service life, and an operating pressure of 6 MPa or 10 Mpa.
