Induction melting machines: which capacity band fits your floor

Choosing an induction melting machine looks like a capacity question and is really a power supply question. Three of the four machines in our range need three-phase, and no amount of wanting a bigger crucible changes what is coming into your building.

This guide sets out the four platforms, the order to decide in, and the one running cost that is left out of most budgets. Every figure is the catalogue figure already published on the casting and melting range page.

What induction melting actually changes

A torch heats metal from the outside in. Induction puts the heat inside the metal itself, so the charge comes up to temperature evenly rather than from the surface inward. Our catalogue describes the result as fast, clean, uniform and more controllable, able to support purification stages and reduce heat-induced oxidation.

The practical differences show up at the bench rather than in the specification: flameless and silent operation, less thermal shock, lower energy consumption, and an operator who is not standing over an open flame all shift. All four machines are IGBT platforms rated to a maximum of 1200 °C.

Step 1: check your incoming supply — this decides most of it

Only one machine in the range runs on single phase:

• IG-1/2 — single phase 230V/50Hz, 3.5 kW
• IG-3/4 — three phase 440V/50Hz, 7 kW
• IVC-1/2 — three phase 440V/50Hz, 7 kW
• IG-10/20 — three phase 440V/50Hz, 12 kW

If your workshop has single phase only, the IG-1/2 is the range — and at 1–2 kg per cycle in 4–6 minutes, that is a real production machine rather than a compromise. If you are planning a three-phase connection anyway, get the timeline for it before you order, because a melter waiting on a supply upgrade is expensive shelf furniture.

Step 2: size the crucible from cycles, not from capacity

Read the melting-time row against the capacity row rather than on its own. The IG-10/20 melts ten times the metal of the IG-1/2 and takes roughly three times as long to do it — that ratio, not the headline capacity, is what makes it the machine for a floor where cycles per shift govern output.

Work out how many kilograms you actually pour in a day, divide by the cycles a shift allows, and buy the band that covers it with a little headroom. Buying two bands up "for growth" means melting a small charge in a large crucible, which is neither fast nor economical.

Step 3: budget the chiller — footprint as well as cost

Every induction model in the range is specified with a water chiller as its cooling system. It is not an accessory, and it is the item most often missing from a floor plan drawn around the machine alone.

The IG-10/20 is the one to watch: induction unit, chiller and a separate tilting unit, three footprints to place with working access to each. Lay it out on paper before the machine arrives, not after.

When the IVC-1/2 is the right answer instead

The IVC-1/2 is not simply a melter. It melts under induction and pours from the bottom of the crucible under vacuum rather than tipping from the top. Two things follow from that:

• The cleanest metal reaches the flask first. Oxides and dross float; bottom pouring leaves them behind rather than carrying them in with the pour.
• Vacuum reduces gas porosity. That is the defect that shows up as pinholes after polishing, on exactly the detailed and thin-section work that is most expensive to scrap.

So the question is not "IG or IVC" on capacity — both cover 1–2 kg. It is what your reject sheet says. If gas porosity and inclusions are recurring, the IVC-1/2 addresses the cause. If your castings are sound and your problem is throughput, an IG melter is the better spend.

Where melting sits in the workflow

Melting and casting are stage six of ten. What reaches them is only as good as stage five — investment and burnout — and what leaves them goes to polishing and finishing. Two consequences worth planning for:

• Burnout usually becomes the constraint before melting does. Furnace cycle time drives the daily schedule on most floors. Adding melting capacity behind an undersized furnace moves the queue rather than shortening it — see how to find the real bottleneck.
• Automating setting changes the arithmetic. If you have just tripled output at stage four, size melting against the new volume rather than last year's.

What our catalogue does not publish

The 3 in 1 Casting Machine is listed by name in the catalogue without a parameter table, so its capacity, power supply, cycle time and footprint are not on this site. We have deliberately not inferred them from the IG or IVC machines — those are different platforms and the numbers would not transfer. Ask and we will send the current datasheet.

Prices, warranty terms, delivery times and crucible consumable costs are confirmed in writing on your quotation rather than published here.

A quick decision summary

Send us your monthly pour weight, your incoming supply and your available floor area and we will tell you which band fits — including when the honest answer is that your constraint is at burnout rather than melting. Send an enquiry or call +91 98216 12340.