Continuous Hot Isostatic Pressing - Possible Design Configurations

Abstract

Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIPing) is an effective bulk manufacturing process of materials for advanced, strategic, engineering or priority applications. However, HIPing’s main deficiency is its nature of batch processing, which limits its utility in industry for bulk processing. A simple conceptual framework proposed recently by the main author of this paper drew upon some ideas from different fields such as Space Technology, Inter-Ocean Travel, Glove Boxes, In-line Annealing, besides small Components in use for VHP or HT environments. However, to illustrate the idea further to enable development by teams of engineers, detailed designs are developed with perspective views for three possible configurations. Two of these include mechanical automation for material handling within the Zones. The proposed design is expected to make HIPing, when further developed, into a widely usable and more afordable bulk manufacturing process adaptable by many more genres of industries than presently possible in its existing batch avatar.