A leading global automotive supplier of systems and components has purchased a new roller hearth annealing furnace from AFC-Holcroft. The new equipment will be installed in the Southeast region of the United States, where the same plant has been running production using two Holcroft brand roller hearth annealers since the late 1990's.

The new roller hearth furnace will be similar to the existing installation in design, but updated with modern controls systems and features.

The roller hearth design offers the customer more flexibility than other types of thermal processing technology such as induction. A roller hearth furnace can produce a larger volume of parts, change recipes easily, provide long cycle times, and offer the flexibility of batch style processing in a continuous type design.

"The customer's team recognized and acknowledged the strength and flexibility of the original roller hearth design for their application" said Ron Graham, sales engineer at AFC-Holcroft. "They provided vital feedback to us on areas of potential improvement, which allowed us to provide the optimal solution by combining the known functionality of the existing design with identified areas of improvement based upon decades of in-plant experience."