Task

To live up to customer demand, uniform quality in the production process must be guaranteed even for large quantities. In a new annealing furnace made by caldatrac® Industrieofenbau GmbH & Co. KG from Höchheim, Germany this consistent quality is ensured with the help of the JUMO mTRON T automation system. The challenge for the new plant was to anneal the treated thermosets using an even and precise heat treatment.

Solution approach

The tolerance limits provided by the customer for these materials are extremely narrow. The raw parts are pushed into the furnace using a tempering trolley. Up to 8 different batches on 6 tempering trolleys can be simultaneously placed into the furnace and processed. Due to the furnace design, an even distribution of heat is achieved inside the furnace to produce a temperature distribution with a maximum deviation of ± 3 K. The large variety of products made it particularly important to save and edit different annealing programs directly in the system. At ROS GmbH & Co. KG, the different programs for the annealing process are launched by the user with ease via the multifunction panel 840. The creation of programs, which comprise up to 100 segments, can also be performed directly on the device. Each annealing process is not only controlled by the JUMO mTRON T system, but is also recorded. The batch reporting of the system enables continuous monitoring and evaluation of the individual furnace components. A detailed evaluation of the deployed temperatures and programs allows conclusions on quality under the influence of different factors to be drawn at any time.

Project outcome

The 4-channel analog input module is a special feature. It is equipped with universal and galvanically isolated analog inputs for thermocouples, RTD temperature probes, and standard signals. Different measurands such as temperature, pressure, and humidity can therefore be precisely recorded and digitized using the same hardware.