non- conductive, high temp material options??

[fastline12]

We need to induction heat some small parts and due to the small cylindrical size, we are concerned of interaction of the fixture and heating coil. Obvious thought might be to use standard plastics but because the part is a copper alloy, heat transfer into the fixture will certainly occur so the material may have to endure up to 500F.

Does anyone have any thoughts on either unfounded induction coil interaction or an idea of material we could test that would not be affect by the work coil?

 

[btrueblood]

Buy some boron nitride sintered powder blocks. Easy to machine and capable of much higher temperatures than 500 F (we used it for brazing furnace tooling at temperatures up to 1800 F or so).

http://www.mcmaster.com/#boron-nitride-ceramic/=l6ese1

...amongst many other suppliers.

 

[ScottyUK]

At a previous employer we used a material called celazole to manufacture some one-off high temperature non-ferrous components. Ceramic wasn't chosen at the time due to the shape required, but in retrospect the machine shop reckoned they might have done better with Macor than celazole.

 

[IRstuff]

There are lots of materials that should non-interacting with RF:
alumina, silicon carbide, quartz

TTFN
faq731-376

 

[ScottyUK]

Good point - is this a radio frequency unit heater or a medium-frequency type of a few kHz up to a few tens of kHz?