WARF TECHNOLOGIES

UW-Madison researchers have designed an automatic arc melting system (termed “AlloyBot”) which accepts feedstock materials loaded by a six-axis robot, then automatically loads, melts, and homogenizes alloys. The design encompasses various innovations and unconventional features which enable this system to produce alloys across a wide range of compositions (especially including high temperature materials), in a cleaner, more reproducible, fully automatic and significantly faster manner. Key innovations include the use of four electrodes in parallel that can be independently and automatically actuated, a new evaporation shield, and an exchangeable crucible to facilitate automatic cleaning.

• Engineering : General engineering technologies
• Materials & Chemicals : Metals