20th International Forgemasters Meeting - IFM 2017

The ESR process has been established within the last decades as a mature, reliable and attractive production route for big forging ingots of more than 100 tons in weight. This material is further used for hollow or solid forgings in power generation industry. Advantages in solidification structure, mechanical properties and yield of the ingot shift the ESR process more and more in the focus of modern forging companies. Today, state of the art ESR processed ingots are produced up to 250 tons as material for reactor pressure vessels, rotors, shafts etc. and a demand on a further size increase exists. INTECO permanently develops ideas and solutions for upscaling the process which leads to challenges upstream and downstream of ESR which of course need to be considered. One of these fields of interest is the production of consumable ESR electrodes focusing on a quality and yield enhancement of the entire process route. This paper explains some of these ideas and strategies and gives detailed comparisons between classical and new ways of electrode production. The newly developed segment casting process will be introduced to illustrate promising alternatives of electrode production. Finally, engineering and operational challenges related to upscaling strategies of ESR are analyzed.