Rebuild, Upgrade, and Service Programs

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Surface® Combustion partners with customers to provide long-term value for their investment with our extensive rebuild, upgrade, and service programs. Your Surface equipment was carefully manufactured for repeatable, reliable performance, however, with time, all equipment needs maintenance, repairs, and upgrades. Since Surface maintains records, including drawings and bills of materials, of every piece of equipment we’ve manufactured over our 100-year history, we are prepared to quickly and efficiently help you. Surface is constantly developing new technology that we can apply to your equipment to make it more productive and efficient, and whether you have a batch furnace, roller hearth, pusher furnace, pit furnace, nitriding furnace, quench furnace, tempering furnace, continuous heat treatment furnace, atmosphere furnace, or custom vacuum furnace we will service your system.

The first step to getting the most out of any piece of equipment is performing suggested preventative maintenance. You would never expect your car to run at peak performance without regular oil changes and tire rotations, so why would the school of thought be any different for a piece of thermal processing equipment? RX® Endothermic Atmosphere Gas Generators should be burned out on a regular basis, and catalyst and heating media need to be replaced when necessary. The burners on an Allcase® BIQ need to be tuned. Belts on continuous furnaces need to be inspected for wear and to ensure proper steering and tracking. Graphite heating elements in vacuum furnaces must inspected and replaced when they show signs of damage or erosion. The list of preventative maintenance needs goes on and on. Our customer service engineers can perform these crucial tasks or offer resources and support so that you can tend to them in house.

It is inevitable that your furnace system or generator maintenance plan will eventually indicate the replacement of consumables such as alloy and refractory. Our new AP™Torque preventative maintenance tool helps you identify the need for alloy replacement in your Allcase.

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Aftermarket Parts Department makes sure that you have the proper replacement parts in hand.

Aftermarket Parts Department makes sure that you have the proper replacement parts in hand. Replacing fire brick and other insulation components is important for maintaining temperature uniformity and carbon control and reducing the risk of major failures and damage to equipment. Scheduled maintenance guarantees that you have current knowledge of your consumables and helps you time replacement during scheduled shutdown instead of encountering an emergency situation.

Furnace rebuilds and upgrades occur for a multitude of reasons. Continuous furnace capacity is increased by adding length to some furnace types. Vacuum inner chambers are replaced when the graphite insulation reaches its threshold. Controls are upgraded to keep up with advancing technology and quality standards. Rugged, reliable furnace casings are reused when internal, consumable components have come to the end of their lifecycle. Surface’s rebuild manufacturing department is skilled at all these services along with many more.

Whether you’re looking for training and assistance with execution on the simplest of preventative maintenance or facing a major rebuild, let the experts at Surface help you plan an appropriate strategy and procure the proper parts. Breathing new life into seasoned equipment can truly show you the Value of Surface™.

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Parts professionals at our Maumee, Ohio headquarters utilize an ERP software controlled inventory and parts identification system for quickly identifying your part and promptly processing your order. Often, same day shipment from our inventory can be provided.

Using the Surface Aftermarket Parts specialists combined with our genuine Surface parts gives you and your team the confidence that the furnace will continue to produce optimal results for your production line. We pride ourselves in knowing all our furnaces, how to care for them and how best to support them in the field. At Surface, our business is built on the thermal processing value we bring to our customers that starts with a new furnace and continues with caring and knowledgeable support.

Frequently Asked Questions

Over time, a furnace will accumulate free carbon in the heating chamber. This can build up over time and can affect the furnace atmosphere and probe readings, leading to more soot buildup and poor metallurgical results. Soot will also eat away at the furnace alloy, shortening or ending its life. How fast this happens is very dependent on carbon level, temperature, load time, and other factors. The frequency of your burnouts will be dependent on your unique operating conditions.

Endothermic generators also build up free carbon in the catalyst bed and it can affect the gas reaction, creating a barrier between the gas and the catalyst. Enough carbon can block the flow of gas through the reaction tube and reduce the capacity of the generator.

During a burnout, air is introduced into the furnace or generator at a high temperature and will react with the free carbon, burning it away. Always follow your furnace or generator operating instructions for the correct burnout procedure. Contact Surface Combustion if you need a copy of yours.

Ideally, the completeness of a burnout is measured using gas analysis. Since a burnout is really just the carbon being burned, is complete when no more combustion is detected. The CO2 level will drop to almost zero and the oxygen in the exhaust will increase to close to 21% (the percentage in normal air).

In the absence of an analyzer, time is usually used. Except for extreme cases, a single 8-hour shift will be more than enough. If the case of a furnace that is extremely sooted, carbon will be seen laying on the floor or burning that looks like sparks or fireflys just as you open the furnace door. Some furnaces will need to be shut down and manually cleaned.

Over time, carbon can accumulate on a probe tip. Because a sooted probe can lead to erroneous carbon readings and cause accelerated sooting in the furnace as a whole, carbon probe should be periodically burnt out. This is usually done once per load, when the door cycles, or one per 8 hour shift, in the case of very long loads.

Move Forward With Surface

We’re here to help. Surface Combustion is your heat treat equipment partner and expert knowledge resource as your company makes plans for innovation and growth.
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