Roller Hearth Furnace
Roller Hearth furnaces are very versatile with efficient configurations and are mostly used to index the movement of workload baskets. Roller Hearth furnaces can be set up in an oscillating configuration for long heating cycles on very long stock such as pipe, tubing, strip, and slabs. The Roller Hearth can also handle heavy loads in high volumes because the rolls enable smooth movement of individual carriers, unlike high-maintenance pusher furnaces which rely on forcing a long line of base trays against each other to achieve movement of the product.
This style furnace can be Continuous or Indexing on a fixed interval or oscillating fore and aft in place to accomplish a particular time-temperature cycle.
If sufficient floor space is available, a Roller Hearth furnace can accomplish a multi-step process such as stress relief including heat, soak and cool steps, moving the product in a continuous manner.
By using an indexing system the footprint can be much smaller because the hearth advances one basket at a time through the steps.
In the oscillate-in-place type, a long load is moved into the furnace chamber, its doors closed, the system oscillates to keep the rollers from sagging and when the time-temperature cycle has been completed, the load is quickly powered out of the furnace chamber.