Engineering news
Europe’s largest production plant for titanium aerospace castings is nearing completion at AMRC Castings’ facilities on the outskirts of Sheffield, England.
Two large scale power supply units have been installed to deliver the energy required by the organisation’s consumable electrode casting furnace. The furnace is capable of melting the 1,000kg of titanium required to make a 500kg casting and has three interchangeable bodies, which give it the versatility to produce components with a finished weight ranging upwards from 60kg.
Closed loop cooling systems that prevent the furnace bodies themselves from melting are being installed, along with hydraulic and pneumatic systems, remove air from the furnace and casting chambers. This is essential when dealing with molten titanium due to it reacting violently with oxygen.
The systems are also used to rotate the furnace body to pour molten titanium into a ceramic mould in the casting chamber below, which incorporates a turntable that can spin the mould at up to 300 revolutions a minute for improved centrifugal casting.
A new plant is being installed to make ceramic mould shells up to two metres in diameter and 2.5 metres long which could weigh more than 2.5 tonnes and will be large enough to produce the largest variants of aero engine intercases up to 500kg, and other structural aerospace components.
Furnace construction is due to finish in time for training and cold commissioning to start during November and will be followed by hot commissioning and the first test melts in December, depending on when permission is given to energise the power supplies.
Richard Gould from AMRC Castings said: “We plan to create a world class titanium casting capability in the UK developing the skills base necessary to enable companies to reap the rewards of carrying out a process that is very, very challenging.”
AMRC Castings’ furnace is part of an investment and R&D programme, designed to enable UK companies to break into global markets for large-scale titanium aerospace engine and structural components.
The programme is backed by the UK’s Aerospace Technology Institute and its innovation agency Innovate UK.