Mesh belt furnace is a very important continuous mesh belt furnace heat treatment equipment, whose core function is to perform various heat treatment processes on large quantities, small and medium-sized metal parts, to achieve the required physical and mechanical properties of the parts (such as hardness, strength, toughness, wear resistance, fatigue resistance, etc.).
Its core role and advantages are mainly reflected in the following aspects:
Realize continuous heat treatment production:
This is the most prominent feature of the mesh belt furnace. It uses high-temperature resistant metal mesh belts (or chain plates) as a conveyor mechanism to continuously feed workpieces into the heating furnace. After passing through a set heating, insulation, and cooling (sometimes inside the furnace, sometimes outside the furnace) area, the workpieces are sent out from the other end.
Function: Greatly improves production efficiency, especially suitable for large-scale production. It can easily form an automated production line with the previous and subsequent processes (such as feeding, cleaning, tempering, testing, packaging).
Complete various heat treatment processes:
The continuous mesh belt furnace can complete various heat treatment processes by precisely controlling the temperature, atmosphere, and residence time of the workpiece in the furnace, including but not limited to:
Quenching: Heating the workpiece to the austenitizing temperature and rapidly cooling it (usually equipped with a quenching oil or water tank at the furnace outlet) to obtain high hardness and strength (such as martensitic structure).
Tempering: Heat the quenched workpiece again to a lower temperature and keep it warm, then cool it down to reduce brittleness, eliminate internal stress, stabilize dimensions, and obtain the required comprehensive mechanical properties.
Annealing: Heat the workpiece to an appropriate temperature, keep it warm, and slowly cool it to reduce hardness, improve machinability, eliminate internal stress, refine grains, or prepare for subsequent processing.
Normalization: Heating to above the austenitization temperature, holding and cooling in air to refine grain size, homogenize structure, eliminate internal stress, and improve mechanical properties.
Carburizing/carbonitriding: Heating and insulation in a carbon rich (or carbon nitrogen) atmosphere to allow the surface of the workpiece to absorb carbon (or carbon nitrogen) atoms, followed by quenching and tempering to achieve high surface hardness, high wear resistance, and good core toughness.
Brazing: Under a protective atmosphere, a brazing material with a melting point lower than the base metal is used to melt and fill the joint gap, achieving the connection between metals.
Sintering: In powder metallurgy, the pressed powder body is heated to a temperature below the melting point of the main component, causing metallurgical bonding between particles and obtaining the desired performance of the product.
Blushing/Blackening: A surface oxidation treatment of steel to form a dense magnetic iron oxide film (Fe3O4), mainly used for rust prevention and aesthetic purposes.
Provide a controllable atmosphere environment:
Many heat treatment processes, especially quenching, carburizing, brazing, and sintering, require specific protective or reactive atmospheres to prevent oxidation and decarburization of the workpiece, or to promote specific chemical reactions such as carburizing.
Function: continuous mesh belt furnaces are usually equipped with an atmosphere control system (such as introducing nitrogen, methanol cracking gas, natural gas, ammonia, etc.), which forms and maintains the required atmosphere composition in the furnace (especially in the heating and insulation zones) to ensure processing quality. The design of the furnace body (such as the muffle tank structure) helps to seal and evenly distribute the atmosphere.
Ensure the stability and uniformity of processing quality:
mesh belt furnaces usually have a long furnace and precise temperature control zones (preheating zone, heating zone, insulation zone), combined with uniform mesh belt conveying speed, so that the workpiece is uniformly heated in the furnace and undergoes highly consistent heat treatment processes (temperature, time, atmosphere).
Function: The quality stability between batches of produced parts is good, with small fluctuations in hardness, microstructure, deformation, and other indicators, which is conducive to strict quality control.
Improve production automation and reduce labor intensity:
Automatic loading of workpieces (vibrating disc, elevator, etc.) → mesh belt conveyor → automatic quenching → automatic cleaning → automatic tempering (may require another mesh belt to bring back to the furnace) → automatic unloading.
Function: Significantly reduce manual operation steps, lower labor intensity, improve production efficiency and safety, and facilitate 24-hour continuous operation.
Suitable for small and medium-sized workpieces with regular shapes:
The conveying method of the belt furnace determines that it is most suitable for handling parts that are relatively light in weight, small in size (usually weighing a few grams to a few kilograms per piece, with length and width limited by the mesh belt), and have shapes that are not easy to wrap or stack, such as standard parts (bolts, nuts, washers), bearing rings, chains, hardware tools, automotive parts, powder metallurgy parts, electronic components, etc.
