Background technology
Titanium and titanium alloy are little with its proportion, and plasticity is good, and specific strength and heat resistance are high, and cryogenic property is good, and corrosion resistance is good, and with tissue good superior performances such as affinity is arranged, and becomes one of most important engineering material.Closely for decades; Development along with technology; The effect of titanium and titanium alloy more and more adds important, and they are basic material, the critical material of industry development in departments such as space flight, aviation, navigations, and they also play an important role in industries such as chemical industry, petrochemical industry, medical treatment, machineries.The output of whole world titanium sponge when nineteen forty-seven only 2 tons is increased sharply to 16.64 ten thousand tons during by 2007.Now; Titanium and titanium alloy are used to make the housing of spacecrafts such as guided missile, rocket, airship in a large number; The housing of aircraft, wing and engine blade, the housing of steamer, warship, submarine, sea water desalinating unit, chemical reactor, pipeline, container; Artificial teeth, bone, joint, clamping plate, and instrument, precision optical machinery, golf club, spectacle-frame, clock and watch, jewellery and ornament.In addition, titanium also is used to make important functional material such as superconductor, hydrogen storage material, gettering material, piezoelectric and marmem.
But fierce reaction at high temperature can take place with many elements such as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon in titanium, and this melting for titanium and titanium alloy brings exceptional hardship---almost there is not a kind of crucible of routine to be used.Therefore, the vacuum consumable electrode arc furnace of the various means of melting titanium and titanium alloy---melting titanium sponge, the vacuum cooling-shell furnace of cast titanium foundry goods, the plasma cold hearth of smelting titanium alloy, or the like, they all will use water jacketed copper crucible.At present, though these technology are quite ripe, they still have some shortcomings, complex process for example, and apparatus expensive, production cost is high, or the like.With the non-consumable arc furnace is example; It needs earlier titanium sponge and alloy material to be mixed and to be pressed into rod, and it is excellent to grow up their welding, is installed to long rod on the equipment as electrode again; Form electric arc through the bath surface-discharge in electrode and the copper crucible then; Make the tip of electrode form drop entering bath, the titanium liquid of bath bottom solidifies under the cooling effect of crucible, all fuses into bath until electrode and forms the titanium ingot.
The cold crucible Induction Melting Technology is the new technology of last century Mo development, and its structure is similar with common vacuum medium frequency induction furnace, has just replaced ceramic crucible and refractory crucible with water jacketed copper crucible.This method of smelting has been compared following advantage with traditional method of smelting of above-mentioned titanium and titanium alloy: raw material can be a form more arbitrarily: bulk, graininess, leftover pieces, reclaimed materials do not need to process specially basically; Add easily alloying element, titanium alloy that can the smelting component more complicated; Can realize refinery practice and alloying process through electromagnetic agitation at fusion process, obtain the quality high product; Accomplish in the lump among being arranged in same equipment to casting process and melting operation, can adopt multiple Special Processes of Metal Castings technological, or the like.
But the cold crucible Induction Melting Technology still is not used widely in the large-scale production of titanium and titanium alloy.Its reason is that the equipment in past is according to single stove melting, the pattern design of single stove casting, when producing in this manner, its efficient is low, power consumption is big, cost is high, can't with the compared with techniques such as vacuum consumable electrode arc furnace of serialization operation.
Summary of the invention
The purpose of this invention is to provide a kind of on the basis that keeps with cold crucible Induction Melting Technology melting titanium and titanium alloy advantage; The melting titanium that draws ingot technology, its production efficiency and production cost to be reduced to not to be higher than conventional arts such as vacuum consumable arc-melting through employing or the cold crucible induction melting of titanium alloy draw the ingot method.
The objective of the invention is to realize in the following manner:
Induction melting equipment of the present invention comprises vacuum chamber; Vacuum chamber is from top to bottom by adding feed bin melting storehouse and drawing three parts in ingot storehouse to form; Water jacketed copper crucible is housed in inside, melting storehouse and around the inductor of crucible, inductor is connected with the outer intermediate frequency power supply of vacuum chamber, in drawing the ingot storehouse, pull bar is housed; Pull bar one end and crucible bear building-up close, and the other end combines with driving mechanism; Feeder is housed in adding feed bin.
The water-cooled false bottom copper crucible that said water jacketed copper crucible adopts local at the bottom of the crucible or all can move along the crucible short transverse.
Said water jacketed copper crucible is a path bottom outlet crucible, or isometrical bottom outlet crucible.
Melting of the present invention draws the ingot method to be: with the lower edge that is positioned fusion zone in the sidewall of crucible at the bottom of the crucible; Reinforced to crucible and feeder; Three vacuum storehouses are vacuumized and charge into inert gas simultaneously, start the furnace charge in the power supply heating crucible then, treat that furnace charge melts fully and even back control operating rod draws at the bottom of the crucible downwards; The lower solidification zone of entering sidewall of crucible temperature of lower is frozen into charge bar at the bottom of making the furnace charge fluid column follow crucible; And continue to follow to move down at the bottom of the crucible to get into and draw the ingot storehouse, it is reinforced to crucible when drawing ingot to begin, to start feeder simultaneously, and the height of furnace charge liquid level in the crucible is remained unchanged; At the bottom of reaching the storehouse of drawing the ingot storehouse at the bottom of the crucible, accomplish the preparation work of a titanium ingot thus.
When accomplishing the preparation work of a titanium ingot, clamping charge bar below solidification zone below bite, cut off the titanium ingot, and the surface at the bottom of crucible moves on to the flanking region that draws in the ingot storehouse with finished product titanium ingot.Then, on move and admit the titanium ingot that is held at the bottom of the crucible, restart reinforced, melting again and draw the ingot process.The method of cutting off charge bar can be various blank modes, but the present invention recommends to cut off charge bar with beam-plasma or laser beam more.
Above-mentioned draw that the introduction of ingot method provided single titanium ingot respectively draw the ingot preparation method; With many titanium ingots draw the ingot preparation method continuously; When many titanium ingots of needs draw ingot continuously the time; Adding feed bin, melting storehouse and drawing three each storehouses of part, ingot storehouse that door is separately arranged of its induction melting equipment has vacuum valve between each storehouse; The clamping device and the mechanism that cuts off charge bar of charge bar also are housed in the bottom in melting storehouse.When the raw material in the feeder is used up, close and add feed bin with the vacuum valve between the melting storehouse, open that to add the feed bin door reinforced again, vacuumize and charge into inert gas to adding feed bin then, open the vacuum valve that adds between feed bin and the melting storehouse again, begin to feed in raw material.
Beneficial effect of the present invention comprises some:
1) for adopting cold crucible Induction Melting Technology melting titanium and titanium alloy to design ingot pulling mechanism and drawing the ingot technology.With this mode of manufacture titanium ingot and titanium alloy ingot, its production efficiency produces instinct and traditional vacuum consumable electrode arc furnace compared with techniques is intended, even more superior.
2) the feasible advantage with cold crucible Induction Melting Technology melting titanium and titanium alloy of this technology can obtain embodying under the condition of large-scale production.For example, raw material can use form and type more arbitrarily, does not need to make in advance electrode; Add alloy material, the titanium alloy of smelting component more complicated easily; Can carry out concisely through electromagnetic agitation, improve the quality of product, or the like.
During 3) with cold crucible induction melting equipment melting titanium and titanium alloy, the running status of parts, furnace charge and titanium ingot in the vacuum chamber can both obtain observing, so technical process obtains monitoring easily, operating process accurately, conveniently.
The specific embodiment
With reference to accompanying drawing, induction melting equipment of the present invention comprises vacuum chamber, and vacuum chamber by adding feed bin (15), melting storehouse (13) and drawing (14) three parts in ingot storehouse to form, draws the ingot storehouse below the melting storehouse from top to bottom, adds feed bin and then is positioned at top, melting storehouse.Each storehouse can be the zones of different of vacuum chamber, also can be unit independently separately.Melting storehouse and drawing between the ingot storehouse, melting storehouse and add vacuum valve (16) is arranged between the feed bin.Under valvular situation, each storehouse can vacuumize simultaneously, also can vacuumize independently of one another.Can there be door separately in each storehouse.
Three vacuum storehouse structures separately are following:
1) water jacketed copper crucible (01) and around the ring-type inductor (17) of crucible is housed in melting storehouse (13), inductor is connected with intermediate frequency power supply outside the storehouse.Because the sectional dimension of crucible is bigger, so preferably use middle frequency electromagnetic field heating furnace charge, its frequency range is 1.0~50kc, uses 2.5~25kc mostly.For the heart portion that makes furnace charge is heated fully, with the cross section increase of crucible, the frequency of being selected for use should reduce.
Under the situation of isometrical bottom outlet crucible, inductor is looped around the bottom in melting storehouse, can also be equipped with the clamping device (18) of charge bar and cut off the mechanism (19) of charge bar.
2) pull bar (07) is housed in the storehouse of drawing ingot storehouse (14).Pull bar combines with (03) at the bottom of the crucible on the one hand, and driving mechanism combines on the other hand, and this moves at the bottom of making it can drive crucible.Draw the ingot storehouse that bigger height should be arranged, because the space that it will move down for drawing ingot to provide.
3) add feeder (20) mainly is housed in the feed bin (15), fill the feed particulate material (21) of melting titanium or titanium alloy in the feeder, its can throw in raw material to crucible evenly according to the requirement to charging rate.
Cold crucible of the present invention uses false bottom water jacketed copper crucible (seeing Fig. 1 and Fig. 2)
The water jacketed copper crucible (01) that cold crucible induction melting equipment uses, its sidewall of crucible generally will be divided into the small pieces (02) of 8 to 30 lobe mutually insulateds along mouth of pot, and each sheet must the water flowing cooling.This crucible has various structures, on their basis, local at the bottom of the crucible or all be made into the water-cooled false bottom (03) that can move along the crucible short transverse.
Only introduce the structure of two kinds of false bottom cold crucibles here:
1) path bottom outlet crucible (see figure 1), selected shape, measure-alike strip copper plate are as crucible lobe (02), and the mode that is parallel to the axis of crucible according to the length direction that makes them is assembled into crucible (01) with them.Requirement to these copper plates is: design their shape and size, the distinguish number that makes crucible with their assembly units have to adhere to specification, highly, thickness, cross sectional shape and sectional dimension.These copper plates reduce and have bending in lower width, make them after splicing, can form the bottom (04) of satisfactory cup-shaped.
There is the bottom outlet (05) of diameter less than the mouth of pot diameter at the center of crucible bottom, and water-cooled metal crystallizer (06) is installed in the below of bottom outlet (05).Definite principle of crystallizer length is to guarantee that the liquid metal that in drawing the ingot process, gets in the pipe has enough time to be frozen into the top layer shell with sufficient intensity, and pipe range can preferably be got 2~5 times by 1~20 times of selection in crucible bottom outlet aperture.
The false bottom of crucible (03) is generally also made with red copper, and the internal diameter of its external diameter external diameter and crystallizer is complementary, and the bottom surface of false bottom (03) is connected with pull bar (07), and a driving mechanism can make pull bar drive it and move along crystallizer.The passage of oriented crucible false bottom cooling water supply in the pull bar.
The cross sectional shape of crystallizer and false bottom and size should meet the cross sectional shape of finished ingot and dimensional requirement, can be circular, square, rectangle, or other shape.
Weld the metal tube (08) that is used for logical cooling water (below be called cooling tube) along its length on the surface of crucible lobe.The two ends of crucible are stretched out at the two ends of cooling tube, are attached to respectively on the water water jacket (09) and backwater water jacket (10).
2) isometrical bottom outlet crucible (see figure 2)
Selected shape, measure-alike strip copper plate are as crucible lobe (02), and the mode that is parallel to the axis of crucible according to the length direction that makes them is assembled into crucible (01) with them.Requirement to these copper plates is: design their shape and size, the distinguish number that makes crucible with their assembly units have to adhere to specification, highly, thickness, cross sectional shape and sectional dimension.Width is constant along its length for every copper plate (02), and not crooked, and they are spliced into the potette (01) of straight-tube shape.
Isometrical crucible is not adorned crystallizer, and with the bottom of the crucible crystal region (11) as liquid metal, with the smelting zone (12) as furnace charge, the top of crucible.So this crucible should have bigger height.Definite principle of crystal region in the crucible (11) height is to guarantee that the liquid metal that in drawing the ingot process, gets into this district has enough time to be frozen into the top layer shell with sufficient intensity.Height value can be got 2/3~1/6 of crucible total height, is 1/2~1/4 mostly.
The false bottom of crucible (03) is also made with red copper, and the bottom surface of false bottom (03) is connected with pull bar (07), and a driving mechanism can make pull bar drive false bottom (03) move along the short transverse of crucible.The passage of oriented crucible false bottom cooling water supply in the pull bar.
The cross sectional shape of crucible (01) and false bottom (03) and size should meet cross sectional shape and the dimensional requirement to finished ingot, can be circular, square, rectangle, or other shape.
The welding method of the cooling tube (08) of cooling crucible is identical with path bottom outlet crucible also.
Melting of the present invention draws the ingot method to be:
Before the beginning melting, drive earlier the false bottom (03) of crucible, under the situation of path bottom outlet crucible, make it be positioned the upper end of crystallizer (06) and stop up the bottom outlet (05) of crucible; Make the upper limb that it is positioned crucible intercrystalline district (11) in that the situation of isometrical bottom outlet crucible is next.To the homogeneous mixture (21) of crucible (01) and feeder (20) adding granular raw material titanium, titanium alloy or titanium and alloy additive, three vacuum storehouses are vacuumized and charge into inert gas simultaneously then.Inert gas is used argon gas mostly, also can use other inert gas.
Start the furnace charge (21) in the intermediate frequency power supply heating crucible (01); Treat that furnace charge melts the false bottom (03) that draws crucible with even back startup driving mechanism control operating rod (07) downwards fully; Making liquid furnace charge (22) follow the crystal region (11) that gets into crystallizer (06) or crucible at the bottom of the crucible solidifies; It is reinforced to crucible to start feeder (20) simultaneously, and the height of furnace charge liquid level in the crucible is remained unchanged.In the process that crucible false bottom (03) continues to move down, the charge bar that has solidified (23) that false bottom carries is just being followed to move into downwards and is being drawn ingot storehouse (14).Finish melting and draw the ingot process when crucible false bottom (03) reached near time at the bottom of drawing storehouse, ingot storehouse, accomplish the preparation work of a titanium or titanium alloy ingot (24).
Draw ingot speed to depend primarily in order to keep the constant furnace charge of adding of crucible inner metal liquid face whether can fully melt and alloying, so it depends on the factor such as composition and fusing point of power or efficient, the furnace charge of sectional dimension, the heating power supply of ingot (24).For example, if power supply is 1000kW, its efficient is 30%, and its efficient heat then is 18000kJ/min.This is that the titanium ingot of 300mm is complementary with draw diameter with the speed of 10mm/min.Because this drawing under the ingot spare need be 3.2kg/min to the titanium sponge that crucible is added, and they are heated to 1700 ℃ of also about 17000kJ of heat of fusing needs.
Adopt many ingots to draw ingot technology (see figure 5):
In order to enhance productivity, can reach at the bottom of the crucible draw storehouse, ingot storehouse (14) at the bottom of the time suspend it and move, suspend reinforced simultaneously and reduce melting power.At this moment, the below clamping charge bar (23) in solidification zone (11) cuts off charge bar below bite, and from the surface of crucible false bottom (03) finished product charge bar (24) is moved on to the avris that draws in the ingot storehouse.Then, on move crucible false bottom (03) and admit the charge bar (23) be held, restart reinforced, melting again and draw the ingot process.The method of cutting off charge bar can be various blank modes, but the present invention recommends to cut off charge bar with beam-plasma or laser beam more.
Finished product charge bar (24) quantity that in drawing ingot storehouse (14), holds can stop melting, draw ingot and reinforced process more for a long time, closes the vacuum valve (16) that draws between ingot storehouse and the melting storehouse, opens and draws ingot storehouse door to take out the finished product rod.Then, close door to draw the ingot storehouse and vacuumize and charge into inert gas after open the vacuum valve (16) that draws between ingot storehouse (14) and melting storehouse (13), the charge bar (23) that is held is admitted in (03) at the bottom of the rising crucible, restarts melting, draws ingot and reinforced process.
On the other hand; When the raw material in the feeder (20) is used up; Can close and add feed bin (15), open that to add the feed bin door reinforced again, vacuumize and charge into inert gas to adding feed bin then with the vacuum valve (16) between melting storehouse (13); Open the vacuum valve that adds between feed bin and the melting storehouse again, begin to feed in raw material.Should shorten as far as possible and handle the time that adds feed bin, strive for during this, not stopping melting and drawing ingot.
Embodiment 1 is the example (seeing Fig. 3, Fig. 4) that in having the cold crucible induction melting equipment that draws the ingot function, draws the titanium ingot.
The cylindrical crucible of the water jacketed copper crucible that this equipment is used (01) is as shown in Figure 2, and its internal diameter is 310mm, height 700mm, and thickness 20mm divides 24 lobes, and cooling tube (08) is welded on crucible lobe (02) surface along the crucible short transverse.The disc crucible false bottom (03) of diameter 310mm is distinguish not, its inner chamber be combined in crucible at the bottom of the water route of pull bar (07) of bottom communicate.
Vacuum chamber comprises melting storehouse (13), draws ingot storehouse (14) and adds feed bin (15).The internal diameter in melting storehouse (13) is 1m, height 1.2m.Induction coil (17) around crucible (01) is connected with intermediate frequency power supply, and the power of power supply is 1000kw, and frequency is 2500Hz.Draw ingot storehouse (14) internal diameter 500mm, height 2.4m, its suitable for reading and melting storehouse join, and easamatic power brake plate valve (16) is arranged between the two.Pull bar (07) can draw crucible false bottom (03) and move under the manipulation of driving mechanism.Add feed bin (15) internal diameter 500mm, height 400mm, built-in feeder (20).The end opening and the melting storehouse that add feed bin join, and the two also has slide valve (16).
The initial position of (03) upper surface adds titanium sponge (21) afterwards at the height of the above 200mm of crucible (01) lower edge at the bottom of the crucible in crucible and feeder (20), and vacuum chamber is vacuumized and applying argon gas, and the furnace charge that starts then in the power supply heating crucible reaches 1750 ℃.After treating that furnace charge melts fully, startup pull bar (07) moves down with the speed of 10mm/min, and it is reinforced to crucible (01) to start feeder (20) simultaneously, makes the surface of feed liquid (22) remain on the height from crucible upper limb 100mm.
The furnace charge fluid column is followed crucible false bottom (03) and is moved down, and it is frozen into solid-state charge bar (23) in the solidification zone (11) of crucible, and it is followed and passes the crucible lower edge at the bottom of the crucible and fall into and draw ingot storehouse (14) then.Through arrive at the bottom of the crucible after 240 minutes draw storehouse, ingot storehouse at the bottom of, at this moment obtained length 2.4m, the titanium ingot (24) of diameter 300mm, the about 800kg of its weight, power consumption about 4000 is spent.
In this manner, produce 1 titanium ingot and last about 6 hours (comprise preparation, vacuumize, melting, draw time of ingot and cooling).If produce 4 every day, annual work 300 days, then the production capacity of this equipment is nearly 1000 tons/year.In production cost, the electricity charge are merely 5 yuan/kg (electricity price is by 1 yuan/degree).