Project Challenges/Opportunities

Tip-Up Furnace for 57 foot long parts

Ellwood City Forge (ECF) produces ferrous, open die forgings for a wide variety of industries, including aerospace, oil & gas, capital machinery, mining, power transmission and power generation. These include custom concentric & eccentric shafts, rough turned bar, blocks, discs, hollows and a variety of other custom forgings up to 110,000 pounds.

One of the products ECF produces is long, hollow and solid forgings for oil & gas service. ECF was limited by their existing heat treating equipment to forging up to 45 feet in length. To overcome this constraint, ECF partnered with SECO/WARWICK Corp. (Meadville, PA) to design and install a new tip-up style heat treating furnace that could handle parts up to 57 feet long at their Ellwood Mill Products location in New Castle, PA. This furnace will also be used for other forging types, allowing ECF to increase production across the board.

In order to obtain an optimal time from the furnace to quench tank, the furnace was located directly behind and in-line with an existing 100,000 gallon, temperature controlled quench tank. The previous process required turning the forging 90 degrees and traveling to the quench tank.

In addition to the new furnace installation, the existing quench tank was extended and a new 60 ton capacity lifting device was procured to support the long forgings along their length. All this combined to give ECF a modern, efficient heat treating facility for long forged bars and hollows.

Tip-Up Furnace

Internal view of combustions system and precast shapes

SECO/WARWICK supplied ECF a tip-up furnace designed for a variety of heat treat operations. These include heat-to-quench, normalizing, tempering and annealing of steel forgings. 

The furnace, cut on a diagonal, will tip up so that an overhead crane can load and unload the steel forgings for various heat treat applications.  A hydraulic system with two cylinders operating on a shaft raises and lowers the top half the furnace.  The furnace has 5 independent pressure control dampers that can be operated separately or together. 

High velocity excess air burners are arranged in six zones of temperature control.  These burners operate with fuel only control to ensure a maximum amount of air flow through the burner and provide maximum mixing of furnace gases.  This was done to achieve the best temperature uniformity possible without internal circulation fans at all firing rates and temperature set points. 

The furnace hearth is constructed with precast shapes set above the cast hearth.  The design is capable of holding a maximum load of 300,000 pounds.  Above these precast shapes sit alloy load support piers supplied by Ellwood Mill Products.

SECO/WARWICK supplied the hydraulic system, MCC and control system with SCADA.

The furnace was engineered to fit within a very tight space. In front of the furnace is a quench tank located less than 3 feet from the furnace shell. At the rear of the furnace are building columns which are about 2 inches away from the roof when in the full up position. The furnace was constructed in four sections in SECO/WARWICK's fabrication facility and reassembled at Ellwood's New Castle facility. Ellwood personnel visited SECO/WARWICK throughout the various stages of construction to witness the progress.

Operational Results

Rear view of furnace, control and MCC

The furnace had to meet specific standards requested by Ellwood Mill Products.  The furnace uniformity specification was established per the requirements of AMS 2750D, Raw Material Class 2:  “…the furnace shall be capable of certification with +/-10° F uniformity with a work zone of 48” x 48” x 58’ from 800° -1900° F.”

A temperature uniformity survey performed on the furnace achieved a temperature uniformity of +/- 8 deg F across all set points, prompting the project manager for Ellwood to comment that "this is the best furnace we've ever seen [with regards to temperature control]."   

Equipment Benefits

• Allowed customer to perform heat treat applications for much larger forgings
• Improved end product quality for existing forgings due to temperature uniformity and by improving the time from furnace to quench
• Equipment was custom engineered to fit within the space allotted and to perform a variety of heat treat cycles from 800 degrees F to 1900 degrees F

Feature Article, Vol. 68, Issue 4, December 2010

P. O. Box 908 180 Mercer Street Meadville, PA 16335-6908  USA
Phone (814)332-8400 - Fax (814)724-1407
info@secowarwick.com

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