A manufacturer of HVAC systems has awarded Seco/Warwick’s American subsidiary a contract for a new controlled atmosphere brazing (CAB) furnace. Designed specifically to meet the brazing needs of North American heat-exchanger manufacturers, the furnace offers tremendous gains in both productivity and energy efficiency.
The operating sequence of the Active Only® CAB furnace is divided into stages. These include loading, drying in the dryer, nitrogen purging in the purging chamber, heating and brazing in a proprietary convection chamber, pre-cooling in the cooling chamber with an air-jacket, and the final direct air cooling in the final cooling chamber.
The semi-continuous furnace system is designed to operate on a part-time basis. The furnace can be brought up to brazing temperature from ambient and conditioned with a proper atmosphere in a very short time. This semi-continuous system allows for variable heating and cooling rates, depending on indexing times. This furnace can braze the widest variety of heat exchangers when lower total production requirements are needed.
As a conveyor furnace with a semicontinuous through process, it is capable of brazing parts at significantly higher rates than its previous batch furnace.
“Their manufacturing line is not a smooth, even flow of identical parts,” said Marcus Lord, managing director, Seco/Warwick USA. “Instead, part flow is intermittent and variable sizes. It is why we made the Active Only CAB furnace, to meet just such a demand.”
The CAB furnace operates entirely on electricity, resulting in zero carbon emissions when powered by the region’s renewable energy grid. This new furnace is anticipated to not only double production capacity but also lead to a tangible reduction in the plant’s overall carbon footprint.
Not only will the furnace handle anything they currently produce, but the Active Only furnace is built to be versatile, which offers the manufacturer flexibility to braze whatever new heat exchangers they might offer in the future as well.
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