Need a new Oven or Heat Bank
and don’t know where to start?
Infrared? Convection?
Short-wave? Long-wave?
Medium-wave? Gas? Electric?
For most people, specifying and purchasing a new Heat
Bank or Oven is not an everyday task, and sorting through the
hype and conflicting advice to select and specify the heating
equipment for an application can be the most difficult part of
your process. But
it can be easy if you start by giving us the information we
need.
Fostoria Sales Engineers can
help determine what you need, but usually we won’t know your
processes and production needs like you do.
Rather than first selecting the heat bank or oven type
and then trying to fit it to your application, we start by
defining what needs to be done and then look for the heating
system that will do your process.
In most cases, when your process requirements are
described in sufficient detail, your heating selection will be
obvious.
Collect
Information
Products. The
first step is to clearly define all the products that will be
processed in the heat bank or oven, including dimensions,
shapes, materials, weights and your part’s temperature
limits.
Process.
Second, identify the heating category that best
describes your process - each has its own requirements and
characteristics that will dictate a specific type of heat bank
or oven. Some of
the major categories are:
Drying –
Removing water or solvent from a material, product or
coating.
Curing –
Bringing a product or coating up to a specified
temperature to cause a chemical reaction.
Preheating –
Raising the temperature of a product prior to another
operation such as forming, coating, laminating, pressing or
welding.
Annealing –
Heating a metal or plastic part through a specific
time/temperature profile to achieve better material
properties.
Shrinking –
Applying heat to plastic parts such as tubing to cause
them to shrink around another part.
Many heat-processing
applications involve a coating or adhesive that is dried or
cured. The amount
of coating or adhesive being used and its specific temperature
characteristics impact oven selection, so the customer must
find out what product will be used, along with its processing
requirements. Solvent-based,
water-based, powder, high solids, plastisol and catalyzed
coatings have different heating requirements that the oven
designer must consider. Also,
we need to know the coating thickness, solvent or water
content, and the amount and types of emitted vapors.
Temperature
Profile
The process time/temperature profile needed, required
temperature tolerances and how the temperature will be
measured during actual processing also affect heating
equipment choice. In many cases you may be working with a new process and may
not know the time/temperature profile or tolerances required
to produce a consistent, quality product.
Fostoria will provide testing with different heating
parameters. For
example, the time temperature profile to cure a coating when
tested in a convection oven will vary from a profile generated
in an infrared oven. And,
a profile generated in a short-wave infrared oven will be
different from that generated in a medium or long-wave oven.
The only way to determine these differences is to test
your product in these various conditions.
Acceptance
Criteria
When the final process is defined, we will test for optimum
methods to achieve the desired results.
The parameters to be monitored will include:
- Final temperature
- Time and temperature
- Test for dryness
- Test for cure
- Test for appearance
- Test for physical properties
FOSTORIA INDUSTRIES
application engineers will be glad to work with you on your
process, whether it is new or existing.
Please fill out the Application
Data Form and e-mail or fax directly to Fostoria
Industries, and an application sales engineer will contact you
for scheduling the tests in our state-of-the-art test
facilities, and arranging for shipment of your product samples
and finishes, etc. (or click on the Laboratory Test Box and
complete the Lab Test Request
Sheet).
Phone:
(419) 435-9201
e-mail: (phd@fostoriaindustries.com)
or fax (419) 435-0842
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