Cryogenic Treatment Equipment: Chamber Types

Cryogenic Treatment Equipment

This column covers who uses cryogenic treatment equipment, the two main chamber designs, and what chambers cost.

By Jack Cahn, Chief Technologist · First published in Cold Facts, Cryogenic Society of America, Vol. 41 No. 4, September 2025

Key points

Three buyer groups: heat treaters (who usually temper in their existing ovens), stand-alone DCT service providers (who want chambers that also temper and use little liquid nitrogen), and single-industry users such as knife, brake rotor, gear, tooling and firearm makers.
Rectangular chambers: foam-insulated and PLC-controlled, cooling at up to 1.5 °F per minute to about −300 °F. Common units take up to about 2,500 lb and need a separate tempering oven.
DCI's industrial rectangular chambers (the 18K and 36K, 10,000–30,000 lb at the time of writing) load by forklift into an 8 × 8 × 20 ft space, temper in the chamber, and meet CSA, UL, EU and OSHA requirements with third-party inspection. Today's lineup runs to 45,000 lb with the 52K (see Equipment).
Round, vacuum-insulated chambers block heat 10–25 times better than foam-insulated ones, making them the most nitrogen-efficient design. DCI handles their sales, leasing and distribution.
Costs: smaller DCT machines about $40,000–$120,000; industrial units about $620,000–$740,000. Lead times run 10 weeks to 6 months, and chambers last 10–30 years.

This is DCI's summary. The full article, with its figures and references, is in the PDF above.

First published in Cold Facts, the magazine of the Cryogenic Society of America, September 2025. Shared here by the author.