At the beginning of the year, the schwartz heat treatment system for press hardening, which was installed at a major German car manufacturer’s site in 2009, was handed over to our customer following an extensive conversion job. With partial heat treatment, the last function offered by this production plant is now also operational in series production.
This converted equipment is part of a completely new production line at our long-standing customer. Since the modification, it meets the latest requirements of the press hardening market.
By converting the double-deck roller hearth furnace originally designed for operation with load carriers into a single deck line for processing blanks without load carriers, the energy efficiency of the system was improved by more than 21%. The exit section of the furnace was replaced by a new furnace section to enable partial heat treatment. The cycle time was also shortened by 25%.
The system’s susceptibility to faults has been significantly reduced by eliminating the product carriers. As a result, we can offer our customer a higher equipment availability while at the same time decreasing the need for spare parts. We have ensured this by replacing the old insulation, hearth roller bearings, and loading and unloading roller conveyors. These have all been replaced by new components and now comply with the latest standards of schwartz technology. This also applies to the new dew point control system which operates with dry air. The laser measurement technology we have been using for many years is implemented here.
All dismounting and remounting tasks were undertaken by our experienced service technicians on site at the customer’s. The conversion itself was carried out at our subsidiary Hütte GmbH in Aachen. As a result, the quality and performance of the upgraded furnace system is on a par with new Schwartz heat treatment systems.
We are pleased that we were able to carry out this project in close and excellent cooperation with our customer, thus enabling us to return their existing furnace system to an almost brand-new condition.