Vacaero

Manufacturers of heat treating and brazing vacuum furnaces and controls, complete hot zone and vacuum furnace retrofits, thermal spray coatings, plasma, HVOF and paint coating services.

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Archives for February 2017

VAC AERO renews it’s NADCAP and AS9100 Quality System Certification.

Boucherville, Quebec, February 21, 2017 – Located in Boucherville, Quebec in the heart of Quebec’s aerospace community, the VAC AERO surface treatment (Coatings) division recently renewed its NADCAP and AS9100 quality system certifications. The Coatings division is also proud to announce that after completing an intensive audit it recently received two Safran Landing Systems approvals for PCS, namely PCS2560 for HVOF coatings and PCS4102 for Grinding and Finishing. We are proud to be a part of the Safran Landing Systems supplier network and would like to congratulate the Boucherville team for their recent accomplishments and long-term commitment to the aerospace industry.

For more information on coating service and pricing please click here.

A Brief Discussion of Pressure and Vacuum Levels

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It is not uncommon in the heat treatment industry to hear one talk about high-pressure gas quenching and in doing so refer to terms such as 2 bar, 6 bar or even higher pressures. In scientific terms, a bar is defined as a unit of pressure equivalent to 100 kilopascals. A bar can also be thought of as roughly equal to atmospheric pressure (the amount of force air exerts on the Earth at sea level). To be technically correct, one atmosphere of pressure is 1.01325 bar or to put it another way, one bar is equal to 14.5 psia. Conversion calculators and tables are available to change bar into other units. Another common unit you might come across when talking about (negative pressure) vacuum levels in a vacuum furnace is millibar (mbar), which is 1 x 10-3 bar.

When talking about high-pressure gas quenching you might also hear one say that that they are quenching at 6 bar, to which they might quickly add, “5 bar absolute”. Just what are they trying to say here? Absolute pressure is referenced against a so-called “perfect vacuum” and as such is equal to gauge pressure plus atmospheric pressure. By contrast, gauge pressure is referenced against ambient pressure (14.7 psia), so it is equal to absolute pressure minus atmospheric pressure. So, when one talks about 5 bar absolute, one must add 1 bar of pressure (think of this as going from negative pressure to atmospheric) to arrive at total pressure, in this case 6 bar. As an example, measurements in the English system that relate the pressure of a system to a reference pressure are given by specifying the pressure in terms of pounds per square inch absolute (psia) or pounds per square inch gauge (psig).