High Pressure Heat Treatment of AM Materials in a HIP

HIPing is a long going and widely known process for densification of metals and ceramics. Conventionally, HIPed and heat treatable materials needing some kind of fast cooling has been heat treated separately after the HIP process. Today there is technology available for performing quenching inside the HIP unit. This is an ultra-high pressure gas quenching at up to 2000 bar which can yield up to 3000 °C/min in cooling rate inside the HIP furnace. This technology makes it possible to combine HIPing and heat treatment in the same cycle and equipment. This technology is very flexible where heating, holding, cooling and quenching steps can be combined in any way. The ultra-high pressure gas quenching also gives lower thermal gradients and stresses in the treated material compared with conventional quenching methods and the high pressure during quenching also have a very interesting influence on the phase transformation kinetics.