Titanium is a very active metal. It reacts very quickly with oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon in the liquid state. Therefore, titanium alloy smelting must be performed under a high vacuum or inert gas (Ar or Ne) protection. Water-cooled copper crucible
The reserves of hafnium titanium in the earth’s crust are second only to iron, aluminum and copper, ranking fourth among metal elements. In addition, titanium alloys have a wide range of excellent properties and are therefore becoming more and more widely used. Titanium alloys can be classified into high temperature titanium alloys, structural titanium alloys and functional titanium alloys according to their application background. In addition to casting methods for titanium alloys, there are methods such as forging, superplastic, and welding.
Smelting process of thorium casting titanium alloy
Titanium is a very active metal. In the liquid state, it reacts with oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon quite quickly. Therefore, the melting of titanium alloy must be carried out under a high vacuum or inert gas (Ar or Ne). The crucibles used for melting are all water-cooled copper crucibles. There are three main methods for specific melting processes:
Non-consumable electrode arc smelting Alloy melting is performed under vacuum or inert gas protection. This process is mainly used to prepare electrodes for consumable electrode melting.
Vacuum consumable electrode arc smelting Electrodes made of titanium or titanium alloy are used as cathodes, and water-cooled copper crucibles are used as anodes. The molten electrode enters the crucible in the form of droplets, forming a molten pool. The surface of the molten pool is heated by an electric arc and is always in a liquid state. The surroundings where the bottom and the crucible are in contact are forcedly cooled, resulting in bottom-up crystals. The molten metal in the molten pool solidifies into a titanium ingot.
Vacuum consumable electrode solidified shell protection smelting This furnace is developed on the basis of vacuum consumable electrode arc. It is a furnace type casting profiled part that combines melting and centrifugal casting. Its biggest feature is the existence of a thin titanium alloy solid shell between the water-cooled copper crucible and the metal melt. The so-called condensation shell, this layer of the same material is used as the inner lining of the crucible, which is used to form a molten pool to store the titanium liquid, and avoid the crucible from contaminating the titanium alloy liquid. After pouring, a layer of solidified shell remaining in the damage can be used as the crucible liner.
In recent years, with the development of science and technology and the needs of production, new methods and equipment for smelting titanium alloys and other active metals have been researched and developed, mainly including electron beam furnaces, plasma furnaces, vacuum induction furnaces, etc., and have obtained a certain degree of application. However, from the comparison of technical and economic indicators such as power consumption, melting speed, cost, etc., self-consuming electrode arc furnace (including smelting furnace) melting is still the most economical and applicable melting method.
At present, the quality control in front of the furnace uses the NB-800 series photoelectric direct reading spectrometer, which can quickly and easily detect the content of each element in the titanium alloy, which greatly facilitates the on-site quality control of furnace workers!