HHV – At the cutting edge of vacuum technology
“We believe in intellectual growth. Our endeavor is to indigenously develop and offer customized products and solutions which are world-class.” – Mr. Nagarjun Sakhamuri, Managing Director, Hind High Vacuum Co. P. Ltd.
The Bangalore – based Hind High Vacuum is undoubtedly the leader in vacuum technology in India and one of the leading global players involved in the design, development and manufacture of off-the-shelf and customized equipment and products in the fields of Vacuum Technology, Solar Photovoltaic Energy and Thin Films Technology. The company started in 1965 by Mr. S.V. Narasaiah, the present Chairman, for making zoom lenses for cameras became a non-starter and eventually commenced manufacturing vacuum systems for defence, atomic energy and space applications; optical coatings for biotechnology products; titanium nitride coatings for heart valves; watch crystals and solar thin films.
A vacuum science and technology company to the core, HHV is known as an import substitution company recognized by the Department of Science & Technology as well as Ministry of New & Renewable Energy. HHV operates through its three Divisions viz. Vacuum Furnaces & Special Projects, Thin Film Equipment & Contract Manufacturing, and Optics & Thin Film Coatings.
Vacuum Furnaces
HHV makes vacuum furnaces in vertical and horizontal configurations for a wide range of heat treatment applications. These include: Annealing, Hardening, Tempering, Sintering, Stress relieving, Brazing, CVD/CVI, Graphitizing, Induction melting & casting and so on. The company offers totally automated, computer controlled, recipe driven, vacuum heat treatment furnaces. These are operated in auto mode with complete heating, multi point soaking and gas quenching. Cycles are coordinated using temperature controllers, PLCs, instruments and thermocouples to achieve the programmed heat treatment cycle. Some of the special purpose vacuum equipment supplied include Diffusion bonding hot press, Induction melting and casting, Siliconization furnace, Cabin environment system, Directional solidification and Passivation furnaces.
Customized Projects
One of HHV’s unique abilities is to leverage its core competence in vacuum science and thin film technologies to execute large and customized projects. This has enabled customers in India to shift their procurement from ‘import’ to indigenous basket and thus substantially reduce the costs of obtaining such equipment. Under Special Projects, HHV has engineered, manufactured and supplied Hypersonic wind tunnel, Robotized TIG welding system, Rotary vacuum brazing, Thruster testing, Hypersonic shock tunnel and CVD/CVI & graphitization just to mention a few. Among these, the Robotized TIG Welding Equipment for special materials in high purity argon environment needs special mention.
Robotized TIG Welding Equipment
Technological advancements in aerospace and other core sectors of India’s development programs warrant welding of critical components made of special materials in a controlled atmosphere. The equipment used in such welding is complex and involves highly sophisticated technology. HHV has been the first in India to design and supply such a critically engineered TIG welding system for joining large components. The welding in this system is done in an argon atmosphere which ensures that there is no oxidation at the joints, a common cause for failure during use.
The robotized TIG welding equipment has a specially built large cubical chamber (5m (W) x 7 m (D) x 3 m (H) to house a welding station which can be used by both a 6-axis vacuum/argon compatible robot as well as a human welder. Prior to commencing the welding operation, the chamber is evacuated using multi-stage vacuum pumps and then filled with argon gas of 99.98% purity. Before being let into the chamber, the argon is purified through a series of catalytic towers to bring down the impurity level to a maximum. A chromatograph records the purity of argon gas inside the chamber.
The chamber has been designed with special entry and exit load/lock chambers so that the job as well as the human welder can enter and exit without breaking the internal vacuum/argon environment.
The robot inside the main chamber carries out the actual welding. The job is mounted on a 2-axis manipulator so as to ensure that most of the joints to be welded are accessible to the welding robot inside. Outside the welding chamber, a teaching robot station is positioned which is a twin of the one inside. The contaminated argon gas inside the actual welding chamber is pumped and purified to maintain the argon gas purity level continuously. “This system, employing two robots with all controls and safety measures is a technological advancement over the system currently in use in the developed countries,” remarks Mr. Nagarjun Sakhamuri, the Managing Director of HHV, a graduate in mechanical engineering from the Wayne State University, Michigan.
Thin Film Technology
For over five decades, HHV has been executing challenging assignments involving thin film techniques to fulfill the needs of every important sector of the nation. Its R & D team has been closely associating with world renowned scientists in optics & thin film coatings to develop advanced optical coatings and equipment in the field. A well equipped lab has been set up for this purpose with product characterization facilities to carry out tests based on MIL standards. It has been equipped with sophisticated thin film coaters with necessary modern accessories and processes.
The Optics & Thin Film Coating Division
The Optics & Thin Film Coating Division has earned a reputation for consistent, reliable
product performance. HHV’s successful technology breakthrough in manufacturing high precision optical components is the well equipped optical thin film research lab with a well engineered range of thin film deposition systems with electron beam guns, digital thickness monitors, optical thickness monitors, RF sputtering and spectrophotometers, characterization facilitaeing in a clean room environment, facilitates production of interference filters, beam splitters, mirrors, UV mirror coating and various special coatings as per requirements on glass and metals with proven processes.
Proven Track Record
HHV has been designing and manufacturing telescopic mirror coating machines for over a decade. The first one that was made was for the Indian Institute of Astrophysics and has been installed at Hanle, Ladakh region at a height of 4,570 metres to coat a telescope mirror with a size of 2.1 metres in diameter.
The second machine was supplied to the Inter-University Consortium for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) and is located at Girawali in Maharashtra. This involved coating of a mirror of 2.2 metres diameter. HHV was subsequently contracted by the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) to build a coater for a new telescope which has since been set up at Nainital, for a mirror of 3.7 metres in diameter and weighing 4.5 tonnes. This was also successfully executed, and with this HHV presented itself globally and was able to get an order from Russia for coating a mirror of 2.55 metres for a telescope located at the Caucasus mountain Observatory of the Sternberg Astronomical Institute.
Developments for Space and Defence
HHV in India has immensely contributed to aerospace and defence sectors by supplying vacuum furnaces for heat treatment and brazing applications, CVD/CVI furnaces to process carbon fibre-carbon products, shock tunnel, wind tunnel for high altitude testing, thermo vacuum chambers for testing satellite packages under simulated conditions, high vacuum chambers for testing ion-engines and cryogenic engines, highly specialized vacuum deposition systems for coating critical sensors and on board control instruments as well as large rotary vacuum brazing furnaces for rotary brazing of nozzle cones used in launch rockets.
Special vacuum equipment like solution ageing furnaces, ammonia drying chamber, metal arc plating coating units and several others are also among its products. For specific programs HHV was instrumental in supplying robotized sputter coater for coating aircraft canopies with conductive materials to enhance stealth capability, A space simulation chamber was supplied in 1967 to the Tumba Equatorial Rocket (currently named as VSSC), Trivandrum. Since then a wide variety of unique equipment have been supplied.
HHV has also worked with VSSC and LPSC in setting up infrastructure projects like a CVD / CVI systems for carbon-carbon composites, hypersonic wind and shock tunnels for studying flight conditions of launch vehicles and large rotary vacuum brazing furnace for rotary brazing of nozzle cones used in launch rockets.
For the Indian aerospace, HHV’s involvement has largely been with the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, primarily at the manufacturing facilities at Koraput, Nashik, Korwa and Bangalore. HHV has been instrumental in supplying induction melting and casting furnaces of various capacities & vacuum brazing furnaces of various sizes.
For the defence department, HHV has been involved with various defence related manufacturing and research organizations by supplying equipment like vacuum furnaces, vacuum thin film coaters, vacuum casting chambers and several other equipment. These equipment are predominantly used either in maintenance divisions of the Indian Air Force or the manufacturing segments of various defence departments or in the research centres predominantly for development of new products in the field of metallurgy.
Widening the Horizon
HHV has been steadily widening its geographical horizon. For several years it has exported a few of its products to some of the universities in South East Asian countries. About 10 years ago, it got into an association with Edwards Ltd., a large British company and started contract manufacturing their diffusion pumps and vacuum coaters and branding them for their global market. “We then realized our strength that we could go global with the kind of quality we had already instilled in our manufacturing team. And our opportunity came when the British company decided to allow us to acquire their division of vacuum coaters from their portfolio,” reveals Mr. Sakhamuri. HHV has set up a subsidiary office in UK and started marketing these vacuum coaters globally through distributors in US, Brazil, France, Russia, China, Australia, Malaysia and Singapore. HHV Ltd in UK is today a 100% subsidiary of HHV.
Another major breakthrough is that HHV has been selected as a preferred supplier to Valeo for its requirements of metallization equipment for coating of automotive reflectors. Since then HHV has supplied these components to Valeo in various countries across South America, Europe, India and China.
New Thrusts
With a wide range of needs for use of vacuum technology, HHV caters to space, aerospace, defence, atomic energy, automotive, pharmaceutical, electrical &electronics, chemical and other core sectors in some form or the other. “We have always been a research and development company. We have been bringing in a lot of innovative products either by good engineering or using new technology to ensure the customer has his needs met. With vacuum becoming an integral part of manufacturing of various specialty materials / processes, unique systems are being asked for to be designed and manufactured. Here we can play a pivotal role and meet the demand of the user industry,” states
Mr. Sakhamuri.
Facilities and Capabilities
During HHV’s early days quality raw materials were not available as it was a niche segment. This put a lot of strain on the company. To address this issue, the company worked very closely with the suppliers to help them understand the requirements and to ensure that they were in a position to meet them. This is one of the major factors that helped in our operational efficiency and success, recounts Mr. Sakhamuri. On the other hand, HHV has been equally focused on manufacturing capabilities and innovation. The company has two sprawling state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities – Unit I in Peenya and Unit II in Dabaspet. HHV is an IMS company. Its facilities are ISO-9001:2008, ISO-14001:2004 and BS OSHAS 18001:2007 certified and its quality standards meet the most stringent quality requirements. “We have been successful with good engineering to support our innovative methods and this has helped us to reduce our input cost with absolutely no compromise on quality,” he adds.
The managing director is proud of HHV’s engineering acumen and human resources. Being in the field of a technology which is not prevalent in the Indian market, the workforce is quite stable. The company motivates its manpower by having them think rather than just look at their work in a monotonous manner. The company has a dedicated team of 350 employees. Out of this 143 are engineers or science graduates and post-graduates. HHV has 16 engineers and scientists in the R & D Center who are constantly working on developing new technologies & products and improving existing ones. It also has access to experts for needed in-depth technology.
Summing Up
Mr. Nagarjun Sakhamuri opines that vacuum technology is little known in India even today despite the fact that its applications are universal, touching the lives of everyone in one way or the other. In a growing industrial scenario which is incessantly modernizing to meet the global needs of product quality, vacuum hardware is in constant demand.
Manufacture of products in an inert atmosphere to ensure product quality is the order of the day in which the requirement of various types of vacuum equipment will play a vital role. Naturally, being the No.1 vacuum technology company with a domain experience spanning over half a century, HHV will play a dominant role in bringing the benefits of contemporary technology and world-class solutions to the Indian manufacturing sector.
– P.K. Balasubbramaniian
