Heat Treatment Furnace Maintenance

Maintenance of heat treatment furnaces is important in businesses with such furnaces to reduce downtime and increase efficiency. The time a bakery spends downtime will mean customers' products will be delayed. If the products malfunction while they are in the oven, the products may also be damaged. As Vizyon Heat, we provide support to our customers regarding malfunctions that occur or may occur in industrial heat treatment furnaces.

Various approaches are taken to perform furnace maintenance and minimize malfunctions. Today, the most important of these approaches is TPM, which is described as Total Productive Maintenance and includes a series of maintenance activities. In the TPM approach, the basic principle is to prevent malfunctions before they occur. Accordingly, maintenance activities include general maintenance plans such as autonomous maintenance, monthly and annual maintenance, as well as issues such as the criticality level of the machine, the most important spare parts or how to obtain these spare parts as soon as possible, and the training of the personnel who use and maintain the machine. At this point, the document and service support provided by the oven manufacturer to the company increases the effectiveness of TPM activities. These may include critical spare parts lists, user manuals, troubleshooting instructions, and electrical and some mechanical schematics of the furnace.

Maintenance of Heat Treatment Furnaces
Maintenance of Heat Treatment Furnaces

As can be guessed, it is first of all important to know how much the oven operator who uses the oven knows about the oven and the details regarding its use. Another important point is that he/she receives sufficient training to perform daily maintenance and to detect points that may go wrong with the device in advance.

When we look at the malfunctions related to the maintenance of heat treatment furnaces, we can encounter a wide variety of malfunctions. Some of these are listed below:

Damage to some parts of the oven due to incorrect heating and cooling
Damage to oven mechanics due to cooling system malfunctions
Ovens heating to a temperature higher than the upper safety temperature due to software or sensor errors
Damage to the furnace due to failure to properly create atmosphere or vacuum
Malfunctions that occur in gas atmosphere furnaces due to burners malfunctioning or reaching the end of their life.
Damage to furnace insulation or heaters during loading and unloading
Damages that occur as a result of not inspecting resistances or insulations that change shape after long-term use in a timely manner
Damages that may occur due to incorrect parts loading
Malfunctions caused by design errors in the oven