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AssigneeDesktop Metal, Inc.
InventorsNathan Woodard, Jonah Samuel Myerberg, Emanuel M Sachs, Richard Remo Fontana, Robert Edward Weiss, Yet-Ming Chiang, Stephen Dipietro, Nicholas Graham Bandiera
Estimating the term…
A furnace may include an outer wall defining a chamber, the chamber including an internal cavity configured to receive one or more parts, at least one heater positioned within the chamber, the at least one heater being configured to generate temperatures of at least about 800 degrees Celsius within the internal cavity, and a vacuum pump configured to apply a vacuum to at least a portion of the chamber. The furnace may also include at least one layer of inner insulation and at least one layer of outer insulation disposed outward of the inner insulation with respect to the chamber, the at least one layer of outer insulation being sealed with respect to the at least one layer of inner insulation.
A high-temperature high-purity vacuum furnace for heating parts over a range of high furnace temperatures, comprising:
The vacuum furnace of 20 wherein the sweep gas groove has a sufficiently large width and a depth such that a fluidic conductance of the channel is greater than 10 times a fluidic conductance of the peclet gap.
The vacuum furnace of 24 wherein for a generally pure sweep gas a higher degree of suppression of diffusion of the outside ambient air results in a higher degree of isolation and the concentration of contamination of process gas in the hollow interior by outside air deceases as a Peclet channel length increases and as the gas velocity increases.
The vacuum furnace of 24 wherein a degree of isolation can be approximately based on the relationship Pe=u×L/D wherein Pe is a unitless Peclet number, u is the gas velocity and D is the diffusivity of the air within the sweep gas.
The vacuum furnace of 13 wherein the suppression of diffusion of the outside air by the peclet seal renders the gasket leak to be sufficiently uncontaminated to prevent any adverse effects from the outside air on the quality of sintered parts.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.