Cold-hearth melting

Component Consumable vacuum-arc melt Plasma Plasma cold-hearth melt melt Electron-beam cold-hearth melt Induction melt... 

Fig. 16. Schematic diagram of cold-hearth arc-melting furnace with movable piston.

Phase equilibria have been established in the ternary Nd-Ag-Ge system over the whole concentration region for the isothermal sections at 870 K and 1070 K by Salamakha et al. (1996f) and Zaplatynsky et al. (1996) (figs. 67a,b). The existence of four and five ternary compounds respectively have been observed. Samples were melted from pieces of high purity components (Nd 99.85 mass%, Ag 99.99 mass%, Ge 99.99 mass%) under argon atmosphere in an arc furnace with water-cooled copper hearth. The ingots were subsequently annealed at 870 K (1070 K) and quenched in cold water. The isothermal sections were constructed using X-ray powder diflraction film data obtained by the Debye-Scherrer technique with non-filtered CrK radiation. 

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