Shielding gas

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golfer1

Joined
Nov 24, 2016
Messages
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Does anyone use shielding gas in their oven/kiln? If so, could you share the volumes you use and brand of oven?
Thanks for looking and best wishes.
 
I think I'd go to vacuum HT before I tried inert gas. If you ever use inert gas make sure it IS inert gas .
I was involved in a project where they asked what to use in their conveyor furnace .Each of use said Argon. But they used hydrogen , we never found why. Practical ?
Well once in a while the end of the furnace blew out !! :eek: :rolleyes:
 
Either send it out (or get a) for vacuum HT if you don't want scale, you can also minimise scale by using Satanite/some clay mixture or by putting it in a stainless foil pouch. I think there is a reason why people don't use inert gas in their ovens, being that it would have to be air tight and anything you are using to seal at that temperature would melt I would think.
 
Paragon is the main company that offers the gas system add on. I know someone that bought it, and could never get it to work good enough to not use foil also. He quit using it. Salt is your option if you want a scale free set up.
 
Thanks for your help. I knew I could wrap steel, especially ss steel for relieve scale. Just had read about Paragon and their setup and thought that could be ideal. New to het treat, but know nothing about vacuum, will have to look that up.
I can't imagine anyone using hydrogen in heat treat, blowing the end out of a furnace would be the least of my worries.
So the Paragon system does not seem to work well.
Still sounds like the foil wrap is the best way to go for the small users.
 
I have a Paragon with gas shielding. I've only owned the kiln for about a year, and most of what I do is carbon steel. So, I mostly use Satanite as an anti-scale coat, which works fine for me. I've messed with using the inert gas a few times, as I have an argon bottle on hand for my tig welder anyway, and I did have some decent results on AEBL- some areas still had a bit of scale crop up though, so if I'd been trying to protect a very finished surface, I'd have been mad. It takes some playing around with CFH settings, I tried again with a bit more gas and seemed better yet, although there's a line at which argon becomes expensive. Bottom line, for just a couple pieces of stainless here and there, I bought foil wrap and use that. If a person was doing batches of SS blades much, gas might make sense, but then again, opening the door at heat to take one blade out for plate quench is going to let some gas out and air will hit the other blades anyway and I'd think some scaling would still occur.
 
Salem: Thanks very much for your information. It seems as though the Paragon add on may not be a very good idea, especially if you have to open the door to quench. Foil still seems like the way to go.
 
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