Solar Atmospheres (Souderton, Pa.) has purchased two car bottom furnaces, both of which were designed and built by Solar Manufacturing.

Solar Atmospheres(Souderton, Pa.) has purchased two car bottom furnaces, both of which were designed and built bySolar Manufacturing.One of the 50,000-pound, 24-foot-deep car bottom vacuum furnaces will be installed in Solar's western Pennsylvania plant. The furnace is high vacuum, pumped with 48-inch high-vacuum valves and 35-inch Varian high-vacuum diffusion pumps. The second furnace, which has the same specs as the first, is to be installed at an undetermined plant site in southern California.

With a combined pumping capacity of 100,000 Li/sec, the furnaces have the ability to fully degas materials such as Ti6-AL-4V into the low ppm range. High-vacuum performance is in the low 10-5 Torr range at process temperature.