A contract has been signed for two large car bottom vacuum furnaces for shipment to VSMPO of Salda, Russia. The total order value will approach $7 million. The furnaces will be used to heat treat, anneal and high-vacuum degas titanium and titanium alloys like VSMPO grade 5553 for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner and other aircraft. The identical furnace hot zones are 24 feet deep x 84 inches in diameter with a workload capacity of 50,000 pounds each.

Operating temperature for each furnace is 2400°F and high vacuum to 10-5 torr with two 35-inch Varian high-vacuum diffusion pumps. A PC-based data-acquisition system backed by redundant Eurotherm data-acquisition instrumentation is provided for thermal work monitoring and order processing input and retrieval.