A recently article in Crain’s Cleveland Business news (click here for full article) featured Component Repair Technologies (CRT), an aerospace heat treating company that performs a wide variety of in-house aircraft engine repair processes including machining, flame spray applications, welding, heat treat, chrome and nickel plating, shot peening, nondestructive testing, visual and dimensional inspection, and acid and alkaline cleaning . The company works on a wide variety of parts from several different engine models.
The Crain’s article featured a photo of a large vertical vacuum furnace manufactured by Solar Manufacturing, Inc. The furnace was designed and built specifically to CRT requirements.
The furnace is critical for CRT’s daily operations and has logged more than four thousand cycles since being commissioned over five years ago. The unit is in use virtually 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The furnace pictured has a working hot zone 84″ in diameter by 60″ high and will operate to 2400ºF in high vacuum conditions. The furnace has a hearth capacity of 5,000 lbs. and includes a 300 HP motor fan and heat exchanger for rapid argon gas quenching at up to two atmospheres overpressure. Under heating and in the vacuum mode, the furnace operates to the mid-10-5 Torr vacuum range — approximately the same vacuum level found on the surface of the moon.
Elevator hearth vacuum furnace at Component Repair Technologies, Mentor, Ohio
