EoW May 2008

Furnaces & heat treatment

Example of a furnace fromQED ▲ ▲

New combustion control system QED specialises in furnaces for heat treating and coating steel wire. All the company’s furnace designs are for multiple strands of wire traveling through the equipment at relatively high speeds. With a view to improve efficiency and to minimise environmental concerns, QED has developed the dual loop pressure control system. This is a new system of burner control that maintains a close air to gas ratio while allowing for stopping and starting burners without changing these ratios. This has proven to be so successful that the company has received a US patent for the technology. QED are now using this combustion control system on all their multiple burner furnaces, such as oil temper lines, patenting and autenitising furnaces as well as galvanising and Galfan coating furnaces. Another area that the company has concentrated on is the Fluidbed heat-treating furnace. This technology has been around for some time and is well proven for in line annealing, stress relieving, tempering and quenching. QED are finding that more and more customers are running seven days a week, twenty four hours a day (7/24) and can’t afford any down time. Even small maintenance items are a problem. Having studied these maintenance areas QED has now all but eliminated them. Its new furnaces have a fuel injection system that has done away with the need for distribution plenums and porous bases. The previous heat loss problems with poor sealing of the threading openings have been eliminated with their new labyrinth seal system. One example of continuous technological improvement is in QED’s sand return design. With improved design the company has minimised sand drag out and greatly improved the sand handling technology.

QEDWire Lines Inc – Canada Fax : +1 450 458 0200 Email : crowle@qedwire.com Website : www.qedwire.com

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EuroWire – May 2008