LÖMI, a market leader in solvent debinding furnaces for the PIM industry based in Aschaffenburg, Germany, has recently delivered a large order of CIM solvent debinding furnaces to one of its renowned regular customers in the watchmaking industry. The customer, reacting to ongoing technological advances in the PIM industry, changed all of its previous debinding technology to organic solvent debinding technology in 2011. Since then, it has placed orders for increasing numbers of CIM debinding furnaces with LÖMI. In 2014 alone the company has ordered as many debinding systems as in the two previous years combined. A total of fifteen LÖMI systems are now in operation at the customer’s facility.

LÖMI told PIM International that its solvent debinding technology offers many advantages. “MIM/CIM part producers are free in their choice of feedstock, as numerous kinds of feedstock systems can be processed. This makes it easy for part producers to test new feedstocks, or to add another feedstock producer as a supplier, without having to invest in a new debinding furnace. In addition, our solvent debinding process causes very little wear and tear, which ensures a very long lifetime and low operational costs for their furnaces,” stated Ralf Wegemann, Marketing Director at LÖMI. The company’s furnaces feature a high-quality stainless steel design with integrated drying of parts, saving production time and costs as no additional handling of the brown parts is required between debinding and drying. In addition, the systems are environment-friendly as the solvent is operated in a closed system where it is completely recycled.

“This customer uses several LÖMI debinding furnaces EBA-150, which are particularly suitable for small lightweight MIM/CIM parts. Over the last year there have been many process improvements in this particular furnace. Examples are an adapted filling procedure which ensures that the small lightweight parts stay at their location on the trays at all times. To facilitate the monitoring of the debinding, drying and solvent recovery processes for the operator, the current states of the various process parameters are now shown on the display in real time,” commented Wegemann.

A variety of trays and mobile loading aids are available for easy single-handed and time saving loading and unloading of the furnace. The wear-free loading mechanism inside the process chamber prevents abrasive particles from being created, which ensures clean surfaces of the brown parts. In addition, the loading mechanism is completely removable, which makes the cleaning of the process chamber significantly easier.

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