Abstract
A vacuum furnace is a device used in the production of silicon carbide crystals which are used in certain military applications. In order to create these crystals, a source material must first be made by combining silicon and graphite and baking it at temperatures which reach 3000°C in a perfectly uncontaminated environment of argon gas. By heating the crystals in a vacuum, it is possible to reach the necessary temperatures with less lower power as compared to heating at atmospheric pressure. This paper presents the design and implementation of a vacuum furnace automation project that was done as an Electro-Mechanical Engineering Technology capstone senior design project. The automation was designed for a vacuum furnace that previously had only manual controls. The upgrade included additional instrumentation and a LabVIEW HMI for process monitoring and control, data collection, and recipe entry. This project was supervised by the Electro-Optics Center of Penn State University's Applied Research Laboratory.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 967-978 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings |
| State | Published - Jan 1 2005 |
| Event | 2005 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition: The Changing Landscape of Engineering and Technology Education in a Global World - Portland, OR, United States Duration: Jun 12 2005 → Jun 15 2005 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- General Engineering