86AM-K24 Lucifer Atmosphere Furnace

Voss Manufacturing, Sanborn, N.Y., a leading manufacturer of heat transfer tooling and equipment, has expanded its facilities with the additional of an 86AM-K24 Lucifer Atmosphere Furnace. When Voss Manufacturing decided to increase capacity and throughput by adding a furnace for larger batches, they turned to Lucifer Furnaces, a trusted supplier with whom they've had an established relationship since 1999. Voss was seeking to eliminate costly and time consuming stainless steel wrapping of parts with a furnace to operate with a nitrogen atmosphere.

"The finishes on parts processed in the nitrogen furnace are superior which takes less post processing time," says Tom Kammerer, General Manager at Voss.

The rugged "space-saving" dual-chamber Series 8000 AM unit features a high temperature upper chamber heating to 2050°F over a lower chamber tempering oven that reaches 1600°F. Both chambers have working dimensions of 12"x12"x24". The upper chamber is designed with a RA330 corrugated alloy muffle for heat treating under atmosphere. The muffle is fully supported on silicon-carbide hearth plates. Upper chamber heating elements are located on side walls as well as under the muffle for uniform heating. The lower chamber is equipped with a recirculating fan for convection heating and uniform temperature.

A heat slinger mounted on the fan shaft prevents overheating of the fan bearings. Side wall heating elements in easy-to-replace holders are mounted external of an alloy liner for uniform recirculation of heat. Temperature in both chambers is controlled by separate Honeywell UDC2500 microprocessor based programmable temperature controllers. An overtemp safety system safeguards against potential meltdown.

Adds Voss' Kammerer, "We are successfully realizing what we set out to accomplish and are very pleased with the results. This was a good decision which has upgraded our tooling processing."