Surface® Combustion’s Allcase BIQ furnace pair ideally with a charge car system to convey the workload in and out of the furnace and to laterally move the workload between the furnace and a washer, a temper, a preheat, an air blast station, a rust preventative dipping tank, a salt quench tank, a weigh load cell, a scissors lift table and/or a stationary table. The charge car can be a System 1™ model in which the workload is conveyed in and out of the quench tank only or an Extended Reach™ model where the workload is additionally conveyed in and out of the furnace section as well. Stationary tables are convenient staging and parking spots for loads as they move through the steps of the heat treating process. Scissors lift tables raise and lower the loads for ergonomic loading and unloading. Weigh load cells accurately monitor the specific conditions of each work load tray.

Tempering and/or preheating of workloads is accomplished in Surface’s patented UniDraw® furnace. The UniDraw can be heated using direct gas firing, indirect gas firing using single ended radiant tubes or electric heating. Convection of wind flow comes from the high capacity rear mounted fan. Depending on your workload requirements, a nitrogen atmosphere may be used also.

Washer systems that incorporate spraying functions or spraying and dunking functions are designed for removal of quench oils after heat treating or removal of cutting fluids or rust inhibitors prior to heat treating. The washers are heated to the 160°F range and allow for the addition of soaps or detergents to emulsify oils. The cycle is constructed to agitate, settle, remove the oil from the water surface and then to skim the oil out for disposal or recycling.

Air blast stations effectively cool the loads to closer to room temperature after the tempering process using cooled high convection wind flow.

Finally, dipping tanks to apply a rust inhibitor or specialized quenching tanks with polymer or salt can be externally positioned in the Allcase line to give the additional flexibility of quenching mediums in addition to conventional oils.

Allcase equipment is intended to be grouped together with additional furnaces and the required batch auxiliary equipment to form a heat treating cell. Automation of the Allcase line motions and actions, including bar code readers to send any given workload through a determined path of heat treating equipment and with all of the required data collection, is commonplace.