Method of charging a hollow valve with metallic sodium

Abstract

A method of charging a hollow valve with metallic sodium includes providing a workpiece, as a semi-finished product for a hollow poppet valve, in which a cavity has an upward opening at a free end of a valve stem at a working position; inserting a nozzle into the opening to feed an initial inert gas into the cavity by jetting the inert gas from the nozzle; moving up the nozzle to put a holder between the workpiece and the nozzle, the holder holding a rod-like metallic sodium; and inserting the nozzle into a first end of the holder while an additional inert gas is jetted into the cavity from the nozzle to push down the rod-like metallic sodium along with the inert gas from a second end of the holder into the cavity of the workpiece.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.