A Customized Thermal Uniformity Survey Solution for a 130 Heat Treat Furnace Plant
The AMS2750 standard is very important for metals treating plants that are participating in NADCAP industries. Specifically, thermal uniformity surveys (TUS) with the appropriate reporting is often an expensive but necessary requirements for plants that must prove compliance to NADCAP standards. For a metals treating plant with 130 furnaces, a team of engineering, maintenance, and quality had a major challenge performing the surveys quarterly, maintaining the equipment, and producing the appropriate reports.
Neal Systems had originally presented this plant with Invensys Eurotherm’s Chessell 6000 series recorder with TUS reporting package. The plant was initially elated, but upon further testing, found that they needed even more customization and automation than the package offered. For instance, some furnaces were programmed around degrees Fahrenheit, while others were degrees Celsius. There were approximately 40 different furnace TUS test setups, with anywhere from 6 to 40 thermocouples. The types of thermocouples differed significantly, including S, N, T, and K. Some of the furnaces required door tests, where the supplier wanted to verify the response of the furnace to doors being opened and closed. The whole system would have to be highly mobile, simple to use for the maintenance team, accurate enough to meet the extremely tight accuracy levels required by the AMS2750 standard, and highly automated from selecting a furnace to printing a final TUS report.
