Our EB furnace melted the Niobium block quick and cast into the niobium metal, the purpose is to purity the material by this process, but the grain size is bigger than the traditional EB furnace ingot.
Traditional EB ingot could be used directly to make rod or sheet after forging, but this niobium metal is mainly used for additive in steel making, alloy making as clean scrap with good quality. If you make sheet or rod, it will need to EB furnace again to make grain size finer. It is produced only to compete with niobium bar, it is much purer than niobium bar, but the price is almost the same.
