CFC Fixturing - Sustainability Through Efficiency
Carbon fiber-reinforced carbon (CFC) fixtures significantly enhance sustainability in heat treatment by reducing material usage, lowering energy consumption, and enabling higher part loading with improved process efficiency. From brazing to HIPing, CFC delivers high dimensional stability, reduced distortion, and longer fixture life, resulting in better product quality, lower costs, and more ergonomic operations.
Figure 1. Diagram depicting “usable” strength over temperature change for many materials (Schröder 2002)
Introduction
Sustainability in industrial manufacturing is commonly defined as the ability to meet and present environmental, social, and economic needs without compromising those of future generations. Leveraging over 30 years of industry experience, the following article examines the role of carbon fiber-reinforced carbon (CFC) fixtures in heat treatment applications, including their impact on sustainability through increased efficiency, resource utilization, and performance.
This article expands on a previous two-part discussion of CFC fixtures (Heat Treat Today November 2022, March 2023) to focus on the main advantages of CFCs through a sustainability lens.
CFC Compared to Other High-Temperature Materials
Sustainability in industrial manufacturing is commonly defined as the ability to meet and present environmental, social, and economic needs without compromising those of future generations. Leveraging over 30 years of industry experience, the following article examines the role of carbon fiber-reinforced carbon (CFC) fixtures in heat treatment applications, including their impact on sustainability through increased efficiency, resource utilization, and performance.
Figure 1 shows the usable strength of high-temperature materials as a function of temperature. From aluminum and aluminum alloys at the bottom left up to C/C (CFC), graphite and CFCs reach the highest “usable” strength of all materials at temperatures up to around 2000°C and higher.
Are CFC Fixtures Sustainable and Efficient?
Sustainability in the economic sense means using fewer resources per unit of output. This definition is directly related to efforts to increase efficiency across heat treatment processes.
To begin, it’s necessary to define heat treatment furnace fixtures and their main functions. Fixtures can be defined as follows (Demmel 2002):
– Fixtures are manufacturing aids that are attached to workpieces and directly related to the work process. They serve to position and hold the workpieces.
– They serve to bring workpieces into a working-ready position: to position them quickly, accurately, and as automatically as possible, and to hold and/or guide them in this position.
The main functions of CFC fixtures include:
– Force absorption and transmission: the weight of the workpieces, as well as the handling and transportation forces.
– Defining interfaces: position/fastening of the fixture structure, connecting base grid, moving base and entire structure, position and locating the workpieces, support and limitation to the furnace, and ergonomics/weight for staff.
– Influence on heat treatment result: Good flowability through the fixture, good heating/cooling, no influence on atmosphere/media, no other interaction with workpieces as intended.
Figure 2 shows the “specific strength” defined as strength per density of four heat treatment fixture materials.
It can be observed that, especially at high temperatures greater than 1,000°C (1,832°F), the strength of CFC is 9 to 12 times greater than that of metal counterparts. This indicates that CFC fixtures require much less material to hold the same number of workpieces. In practice, fixture volume could be reduced up to 95% with certain high-end CFC, a drastic improvement in material savings. This effect for heat treatment fixtures is illustrated in …
Please find the featured article in Heat Treat Today Technical Tuesday, June 16, 2026:
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