Production facilities

Refining is the first historically developed activity of the plant.

For a long time EZOCM had been acting as a trend setter in the field of development and implementing of new technologies of precious metals refining. Today the plant refinery follows the market needs. Our policy is to provide a comprehensive service that includes both processing of raw materials regardless of the precious metals content in them and manufacturing of products such as refined precious metals powders and precious metals chemical compounds. 

Currently, EZOCM renders services not only in precious metals refining, but also manufactures a wide range of precious metals chemical compounds and powders with various grain-size distribution (down to 0.020 mm).

New objectives have been achieved by application of modern technologies as well as by improving traditional production processes. At present we use precipitation, sorption, electrochemical treatment and distillation methods to obtain refined precious metals powders and chemical compounds.

Production cycle for any product type begins with smelting shop. At this stage trial melting and toll metal sampling are performed by the use of different methods depending on the raw materials type and different technologies of melting and pyrometallurgical processing.

One of the main methods is induction melting. Available equipment and technologies allow smelting and refining materials weighting from several grams up to hundreds of kilograms with minimum precious metals losses by means of oxidation and reduction processes, processes in vacuum and any other controlled atmosphere. For refining of iridium, platinum and its alloys, electron-beam melting is efficiently applied.

Various smelting methods are applied to receive high quality stock materials for manufacturing of any type of finished products.

• vacuum induction melting (with argon, helium, hydrogen shielding);
• open induction melting;
• electron-beam melting;
• melting by means of  semicontinuous casting;
• melting by means of reverse drawing from liquid metal (Czochralski process).

These methods combined with various casting technologies (die casting, semi continuous casting to copper water-cooled crystallizing pan, vacuum-suction method, subsurface ladling, and subsurface drawing) allow to produce ingots and semifinals with minimum gas content, without non-metallic  inclusions and provide a high level of homogeneity of the metal composition. The quality level of the castings produced is confirmed by their further processing, i.e. wire drawing up to micron sizes and rolling plates to foil thickness.

Melting shop together with ingots and semifinals for other production stages manufactures the following range of finished products:   

• standard and measured cast bank bars of gold, silver, platinum and palladium;
• granules of gold and silver;
• plasma-ceramic products made of aluminum oxides.

Ekaterinburg Non-Ferrous Metals Processing Plant JSC along with other production facilities has a high-tech plasma smelting shop for processing and recycling of technogenic raw materials with an extremely low content of precious metals. It consists of two processing units for the sampling of technogenic raw materials, as well as a plasma smelting furnace (the core part of the complex).

The production complex allows processing of "poor" mineral and technogenic raw materials (with the content of precious metals from 0.02% per ton), followed by enrichment and obtaining of precious metals. The laboratory of assay analysis operates in parallel with the complex. The work of the laboratory allows obtaining more accurate results of analysis of precious metals content in samples "poor" raw materials and technogenic waste.  

This equipment allows processing up to 1000 tons of poor technogenic waste per year with recovery of about 600 kg of precious metals (gold, platinum, palladium and rhodium). 

Rolling shop provides plate stocks for electric welding and forging shops and billets for drawing shop. Rolling shop is equipped with rolling mills for hot-rolled, cold-rolled sheets and profiled bars, flatting machine for ribbons/bands, totally upgraded “Quarto” rolling mill for strips rolling.

Rolling shop manufactures flat-rolled products made of over 100 metals and alloys in the following forms:

• strips 0.10–10.0 mm thick;
• foil 0.005–0.09 mm thick;
• ribbon 0.004–1.2 mm thick, including rhodium foil of 10 μm thickness, flattened wire of 5 μm thickness, semifinals for technical items made of iridium (iridium is a difficult-to-form material), production of sheet semifinals made of PtRh10 dispersion-strengthened alloy, strips semifinals for contacts made of AuCr-0.5 alloy and iridium with high precision thickness tolerances;

• anodes of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, iridium. 

Main product of the drawing shop is wire made of gold, platinum, palladium, silver, iridium, rhodium and of more than 200 of their alloys, including:

• Wire made of platinum and its alloys used in instrumentation production and other industries. The wire is characterized by regulated physical and mechanical properties (tensile strength, electrical resistivity, temperature coefficient of electrical resistance, etc.);
• Wire made of platinum and platinum-rhodium alloys Pt-T, PtRh-6, PtRh-10, PtRh-13, and PtRh-30 with the diameters of 0.04-0.5 mm used for thermocouple thermometers. Unique production technology allows increasing and stabilizing thermocouples thermoelectric characteristics;
• Wire made of platinum for sensitive elements of resistance thermometers Pt0, Pt1, Pt2, Pt2-A, Pt3, Pt4 with the pre-determined values of temperature coefficient of electrical resistance;
• Wire made of gold-based alloys AuCu75, AuCu80, AuAgPtPdCu, with the diameters of 0.085-4.5 mm, which pre-defined properties are used in production of critical parts in the instrumentation manufacturing, etc.;
• Wire for catalyst gauzes and catchment gauzes made of Pt- and Pd-based alloys.

The range of wires produced is from 0.020 to 6.0 mm, and of rods is from 0.6 to 25 mm.

The main products of this production area are knitted and woven gauzes made of precious metals and their alloys for chemical industry, instrumentation production, jewelry and other industries, as well as for medical products and scientific research purposes. Gauzes are made of wire with diameter from 0.04 up to 0.20 mm diameter, mesh size of 0.05 up to 0.47 mm and mesh/cm² from 115 up to 10000.

The Plant manufactures gauzes of the following precious metals and their alloys: platinum Pt99.9, Pt99.8, platinum alloys PtRh93-7, PtRh90-10, palladium Pd99.9, Pd99.8, gold Au99.99, Au99.9, silver Ag99.99, and Ag99.9. The following alloys are used in catalyst and catchment gauzes production: PtPdRh92.5-4-3.5; PtPdRhRu81-15-3.5-0.5; PtRh92.5-7.5; PtRh95-5; PtRh92-8; PtRh90-10; PtPdRh90-5-5; PdW-5. Upon the Customer’s request the gauzes can be made of other alloys. Up-to-date computer control weaving machines produce gauzes of linen and twill weave.

For knitted gauze manufacturing the plant operates flat-knitting machines, including Stoll computerized machine which produces circular knitted gauzes from the very start of the knitting process.

Afterwards the gauze is annealed in slot electric furnace or treated by hydrogen annealing to release work hardening and clean the surface.

Then the gauze is cut and subjected to electrochemical activation to guarantee high performance characteristics.

Micro gauze made of platinum (Pt99.9 and PtIr90-10) wire of 40 μm diameter for medical industry and instrument engineering can be considered a unique product of ours. Platinum micro gauze is subject to micro alloying for additional strengthening.

EZOCM JSC preduces reference materials of pure precious metals; precious metals based alloys, and industrial wastes containing precious metals. Reference materials are issued for analytical needs of plant laboratories, and according to request can be supplied for external customers. EZOCM is accredited in accordance with the requirements of International Standard ISO Guide 34 as a Reference Material Producer.  

EZOCM JSC has a number of reference materials available for purchase. Main reference materials customers are laboratories of precious metals refining and recycling plants in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, United Kingdom, China, Czech Republic, Germany, and USA.

The field of application of almost all product range of the stamping shop is the defense industry.

The main products of the stamping shop is oval-headed and flat-headed contacts made of PtIr-10, PtIr-25 alloys, contact details in the form of rings and tubes made of AuCr-0.5 alloy, and iridium disks.

Products of the shop are technical items used in various industries.

Assembly of the items is carried with the use of different kinds of welding, such as argon-arc welding, micro-plasma welding, etc.

The facility is equipped with a wide range of unique fittings, pressing tools that allow producing technical items with complicated design, including items made of Iridium which is hard-to-form material. The plant production line of high-precision equipment allows manufacturing products from electrodes with weight 1 gram up to industrial crucibles with weight 100 kilogram.

Main production list consists of the following items:

• glass melters and bushings;
• test tubes, dishes, crucibles, electrodes, thimbles made of precious metals;
• products of precious metals for industrial usage;
• crucibles made of iridium;
• drain feeders made of platinum and its alloys;
• industrial crucibles made of platinum and its alloys;
• welded tubes made of precious metals and their alloys.

Electro-welding workshop has all the necessary equipment for quality control (impermeability) of welds, junction points and details.