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Many advantages of multi-chamber vacuum furnaces

Multi-chamber vacuum furnaces have many advantages such as vacuum processing, energy saving and maintenance cost reduction.

Early vacuum furnaces all adopted a single-chamber design, and the heating and cooling required for typical processing processes were performed in the same furnace chamber. While this is a cost-effective design, there are conflicting issues that make it almost impossible to design for both optimal heating and optimal cooling.

Better quality and thicker insulating linings will help increase heating efficiency, but will most likely reduce cooling and vacuuming rates. Reducing or even eliminating the use of thermal insulation materials is very beneficial for increasing cooling and vacuuming speeds, but such a design is extremely detrimental to uniform and effective heating. High-pressure and high-flow cooling gas can improve the cooling effect, but it is very harmful to traditional high-temperature zone materials and can cause structural abrasion and deformation.

Multi-chamber designs are common in other types of furnaces (such as batch-type integral quenching furnaces used in controlled atmosphere heat treatment). This solution is also the next logical development direction of vacuum furnace technology. Its advantage is that the charge is cooled in another furnace chamber, so that the heat in the heating chamber is retained and the temperature does not drop. This way, no energy is wasted due to cooling each time it is processed.

In other words, multi-chamber vacuum furnaces have dedicated heating and cooling chambers, resulting in increased process throughput and lower energy costs per pound of charge. Other advantages include a significant reduction in maintenance costs caused by alternating heating and cooling of the furnace chamber.

Environmental advantages

The vacuum furnace used in the through quenching and tempering process usually does not require any atmosphere. The vacuum itself is the required atmosphere condition.

In addition, the basic design of the vacuum furnace is a water-jacketed cold fireplace. In some applications today, there are also hot wall designs with relatively low temperatures. Moreover, vacuum furnaces are easily arranged in dedicated workshops in factories, which is an inherent advantage of vacuum heat treatment.

Capacity advantages

Multi-chamber furnaces have shorter cycle times. Heating 1,000 pounds of charge in a heating chamber that is already at 1,000°C takes 60 minutes, whereas heating the same chamber with 1,000 pounds of charge from cold would take 90 minutes (1.5 times longer). Advantages in cycle times and energy usage result from the fact that only the charge is heated.

The charge operation of the multi-chamber furnace includes both the loading and unloading method and the direct passing method. There can be two, three or more furnace chambers.

Energy saving advantages

The use of multi-chamber furnace design ensures that the effective heat is completely consumed by the workpiece undergoing heat treatment. This means that the energy required to reheat the furnace chamber for each batch is reduced to a minimum. Therefore, energy usage is significantly improved compared to traditional single-chamber vacuum furnaces.