Fluidised Bed Heat Treatment - A Flexible Heat Treating Technology

Abstract

For heat treatment of metal parts wide variety of furnaces are employed. Protective atmosphere furnaces like sealed quench furnace, vaccum furnaces, pit type retort, rotary retort furnaces and salt bath furnaces are used for heat treatment processes. In recent years flui-dised bed furnaces are gaining popularity due to certain inherent advantages associated with them. Almost all the processes such as neutral hardening, carburising, carbon-itriding, annealing, nitriding nitrocarburising etc. can be carried out with a single fluidised bed furnace inst-allation. Added to this flexibility bed temperature uni-formity, quick change over of atmospheres, fast rate of heat transfer and bed buoyancy results in predictable and consistent results in properties and dimensions after heat treatment.