Water cooled inductor
In our company Electroforming s.r.o. we have moved to a new level of innovation in the field of manufacturing inductors for heat treatment of metals. The combination of 3D printing and electroforming technologies has allowed us to overcome the limitations of traditional manufacturing methods and create inductors that are efficient, cheaper to produce, and at the same time increase their lifetime. Water-cooled inductors are commonly used in surface heat treatment plants for industrial HF applications. Earlier manufacturing processes required highly skilled workers who coiled the inductors from copper tubes and soldered the individual parts into the desired assembly. High labour intensity in the production of inductors, failure rate in the operation of the hardening plant, small number of cycles, or almost unproducible inductors below 20 mm diameter. These problems have been eliminated by the combination of 3D printing and electroforming. The individual steps of the inductor manufacturing process, using these two technologies, are shown in the figure below. 
The core of the inductor (production hoof), i.e. the shape determined by the cooling cross-section of the inductor, including technological additions, was printed from a meltable polymer by FDM technology. This was followed by silver plating and thick copper electroplating with a wall thickness of 0.4 mm. After machining, the hoof was melted and the inductor blank was soldered to the standard induction heating flanges of the machine. The inductors made in this way were tested in cooperation with Meduna Vacuum Hardening Plant s.r.o., and “The new inductors, produced by galvanoplastics, show stability even in large-scale production in the range of thousands of hardening cycles.” (Meduna, 2023) Inductors thus outperform hand-made ones by several times higher numbers of production cycles. The combination of 3D printing and electroforming makes it possible to realise otherwise impossible shapes and miniature geometries. Various ferrite elements, rinsing circuits, etc. can be incorporated into the assembly during production. Inductors made by electroforming are still outperforming even those made by 3D printing from copper, mainly due to their low weight, thin-walled design and especially the quality of the external and internal surfaces (they do not impede the flow of the cooling medium, for example), etc.
Electroforming s.r.o. – We meet individual requirements from development to production. #3Dprint #galvanoplasty #inductor #technology #electroforming
