Guess what guys, I work at a facility that gas atomizes raw material(rare earth) into metal powder. We use the same type of furnaces, there is a ceramic crucible that fits in between the induction coil, these crucibles have a very limited lifespan before they start to crack and need to be rebuilt. If you have someone that doesn’t know what to look for a mistake like this is extremely easy to happen. A couple different dumb things to happen one not involving me was a melter loading his furnace threw in a 50# pail of Titanium that was supposed to go in when it was cold then the furnace was to be turned on, well he through it on last and got to experience a very bright flare up to say the least, no explosion though, just a huge fireball. Another instance that did involve me, I was preparing charges for the furnaces and sending them up the freight elevator so they could melt it, well one day I had just got the skid on the elevator and went to send it up, the atomization tower just 20ft to the left of me let out a Big Bang and hiss from the high pressure gas, well the molten metal burned a hole in the collection box and the 200-400+psi pressure in the tower blew out quite a bit of molten metal out of the side, it was probably a radius of 40ft where some bits of molten metal got thrown. Luckily I hit the ground running off the forklift the second I heard the noise and saw bright orange lol, coworkers said they never saw me run so fast. But this happened because of a faulty nozzle where the molten metal gets poured as the high pressure gas get applied, it pretty much went from a mist like spray to a full blown stream of molten metal inside the tower itself. These things can totally happen, but these companies are ranked 35th as essential businesses to national security. These are the companies that have to be proactive about corporate espionage and sabotage, cause it happens.
Guess what guys, I work at a facility that gas atomizes raw material(rare earth) into metal powder. We use the same type of furnaces, there is a ceramic crucible that fits in between the induction coil, these crucibles have a very limited lifespan before they start to crack and need to be rebuilt. If you have someone that doesn’t know what to look for a mistake like this is extremely easy to happen. A couple different dumb things to happen one not involving me was a melter loading his furnace threw in a 50# pail of Titanium that was supposed to go in when it was cold then the furnace was to be turned on, well he through it on last and got to experience a very bright flare up to say the least, no explosion though, just a huge fireball. Another instance that did involve me, I was preparing charges for the furnaces and sending them up the freight elevator so they could melt it, well one day I had just got the skid on the elevator and went to send it up, the atomization tower just 20ft to the left of me let out a Big Bang and hiss from the high pressure gas, well the molten metal burned a hole in the collection box and the 200-400+psi pressure in the tower blew out quite a bit of molten metal out of the side, it was probably a radius of 40ft where some bits of molten metal got thrown. Luckily I hit the ground running off the forklift the second I heard the noise and saw bright orange lol, coworkers said they never saw me run so fast. But this happened because of a faulty nozzle where the molten metal gets poured as the high pressure gas get applied, it pretty much went from a mist like spray to a full blown stream of molten metal inside the tower itself. These things can totally happen, but these companies are ranked 35th as essential businesses to national security. These are the companies that have to be proactive about corporate espionage and sabotage, cause it happens.