EBNER Floater Furnaces

HICON floater furnaces for strip.

Inside a horizontal HICON floater furnace, the aluminum strip is transported through the entire facility on a cushion of heated air; this cushion is provided by the special HICON atmosphere recirculation system, without the strip coming into contact with any furnace component.

Thanks to a newly-developed jet nozzle system, both the rate of thermal transfer and the load capacity have been increased. This achieves a considerable boost to throughput, especially with thick strips.

Once the solution temperature and soaking time have been reached, the strip is quenched rapidly and precisely in a combined water/air quench. This delivers the necessary cooling gradients and tensile strengths for different strip thickness and different alloy groups, while ensuring that the strip that leaves the quench is both flat and dry.

Because EBNER has its own research and development laboratory, we are in a position to fine-tune critical components of the heat treatment facility to meet the individual needs of our customers.

HICON floater furnaces are distinguished by the following features.

• Rapid, even temperature distribution due to the symmetrical transfer of heat to the strip
• Compact and easily-accessible furnace design to minimize both the space required and radiant heat loss
• EBNER SmartQuench with individually-adjustable cooling gradients throughout the entire water and air cooling sections
• Integration of an additional heat treatment section to increase the crash test performance of the strip
• Integration of an EBNER reheat furnace to reheat the strip, beginning the aging process in automotive material

The facility is implemented to comply with the standards required by the automotive and aerospace industry. These standards are primarily AMS 2750 (SAE Aerospace) in the aircraft industry and CQI-9 (AIAG) for the automotive industry.