With Jim Grann, Ipsen Technical Director
“Space – the Final Frontier…”
Celebrating National Space Day brings me back to those words that started every episode of Star Trek. Since the original show was in syndication in 1966, the idea of traveling out of our atmosphere and into space has inspired generations of scientists, astronauts, engineers, and manufacturers. We are inspired to work on projects that help us visit other moons and planets, see places well beyond our own galaxy, and find new ways to look back at our own planet for a better understanding of where we are and where we’re going next.
I’m proud to say that Ipsen has been an important part of helping humanity reach beyond the skies.
Shuttle Service
I remember working in the 1980s on a project that involved the tiles on the Space Shuttle. These tiles had to withstand a delta-T of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit. You could light an acetylene torch, point it at one side of a tile, and it wouldn’t melt an ice cube on the other side of the tile.
In space, heat is radiated from the sun while the vacuum of space acts like an insulator. Wild temperature swings could come from being in the shadow of a planet where it’s very cold, to the “dawn” aboard the craft when the sun delivers relentless radiant heat and light energy. Tile side shields were critical for interior climate control as the spacecraft went from very cold to very hot, protecting both astronauts and payloads.
The black tiles on the bottom of the shuttle were essential as the craft returned to earth. At between 58,000- and 60,000-feet, temperatures rose significantly as friction from the atmosphere worked to slow down the hypersonic craft for re-entry.
Manufacturing these tiles required thermal processing in a vacuum furnace. Materials that are designed to be extremely resistant to heat need special processing that only vacuum furnaces can provide. We’ve learned a lot about spacecraft insulation design since the 80s, but one thing remains the same: vacuum furnaces are an essential part of the manufacturing process.
Today’s Space Travel
To this day, aerospace manufacturers look to Ipsen to help them find effective, efficient ways to build better, more resilient spacecraft components.
With access to furnace designs that can handle everything from small mechanical parts to huge engine nozzle shrouds, customers can come to Ipsen knowing that we’re able to tackle projects of all sizes.
Ipsen is a leading aerospace industry supplier because of the investments we’ve made in our people. The caliber of the Ipsen staff, from the engineers to the manufacturers, has allowed our customers to work with a dream team. Our staff has the drive and curiosity to push into new markets and take innovative approaches with our designs and builds that align with our customers’ goals.
It’s the collective experience that we’ve had in the industry that gives us perspective on best practices. Decades ago, there were customers and competitors that were focused exclusively on speed – speed heating parts and speed quenching them. Our experience with those approaches led us to a better understanding of managing thermal stresses from the surface to the core of an alloyed part. They informed the way we developed better PLC programs and designed hot zones for improved uniformity and temperature control.
Requests are ever evolving, and specs are getting more complex. While the work never gets easier, our team continues to scrutinize and reevaluate controls, uniformity, and hot zone technology. Challenges keep us sharp.
Tools of the Trade
While we know that our competitors may use similar pumps, hot zones, or plenums, where Ipsen stands out is with our control systems. Our team is never satisfied with resting on our laurels, always looking for opportunities to help our clients find efficient and consistent ways to achieve the results they require within very specific tolerances. Our PLC systems afford our customers greater control and functional variety than most alternatives can offer. And our experts help clients dial in the specific functions they’re most frequently going to use or desire.
Whether a customer is using a small horizontal vacuum furnace, or one of our gigantic bottom- or top-loading vertical furnaces, they can expect that Ipsen will deliver the same quality of parts, and the same specificity of control, across all of our product lines. We can run the gamut of geometries when it comes to processing parts, all while ensuring quality and customer satisfaction from start to finish.
Another consideration aerospace manufacturers are looking to solve is weight reduction. Looking for ways to maintain rigidity, insulate the payload from the extreme temperatures, and do all of that on a tight weight budget means finding creative ways to manufacture parts.
One example of this: Ipsen has built up an expert team when it comes to designing furnaces for compression brazing. This process can help users “manufacture” parts within the furnace chamber. Compression brazing techniques can deliver very durable, lightweight parts that are essential to space travel, where every ounce of weight requires additional fuel resources during launch.
Whether we’re delivering process gas to inflate a hollow space between parts or treating massive radiators and heat exchangers that use metal bands for compression within the chamber, we have helped manufacturers make major leaps forward in design and manufacturing processes.
Looking Up & Looking Forward
As you see images of satellites and spacecraft, launches and landings, it might be hard to imagine how these traveling technologies have an impact on our everyday lives. It’s when you start to realize that the challenges to launch and orbit this technology are similar to the ones we face on earth that you can see the impact of the global investment in space.
For example, using lighter materials and compact structural designs in condensing equipment for home environmental controls may prove to be more energy efficient. The development of light but strong alloys meant that HVAC companies could start choosing aluminum over the traditional copper for heat exchangers. Yet we also learned from the way that oxides interact with aluminum, particularly in humid oceanside environments, that we should keep seeking better alloys to improve durability over time.
Vacuum furnaces can help metallurgists deliver alloys with characteristics that solve problems, having a significant amount of control over the chemistry and structure of the alloys and their crystalline lattice to test under a variety of circumstances.
Because vacuum furnaces can be used to create what is basically a flux-free process for operations like brazing or soldering, clean parts can be produced with all of the specified qualities the metallurgist intended. Oxides are evacuated from the chamber, and process gases can produce specific alloy chemistry to deliver just the right levels of ductility, hardness, and strength.
As our customers are focused on discovering what worlds lie beyond ours, Ipsen is proud to be working with them to discover how the chemistry within our furnaces can help them go where no one has gone before – and beyond.