TUS Tuning Enhancement

Today’s method for furnace and combustion system tuning to achieve temperature uniformity in heat-treating furnaces is inefficient and outdated. Manual tuning requires skilled technicians to adjust single components consecutively on a multi-variable nonlinear system. Each independent tuning adjustment has incidental, cascading downstream effects on the rest of the system. Tuning solutions become more difficult to reach as equipment degrades, requiring growing resources over time to achieve the same uniformity. Quality standards set by end users and standardization bodies have become stagnant since the technologies involved in tuning furnaces and combustion systems has remained unchanged for decades.

This paper presents a technology that improves the temperature uniformity tuning process by using an automated, multi-variable, simultaneous tuning algorithm in a system called CertiFire. The CertiFire is designed to map furnace temperature response through its patented training algorithm. Once mapped, the CertiFire simultaneously solves the entire work zone’s temperature disparity through its patented tuning algorithm. As a furnace degrades, the CertiFire uses its history of temperature response maps to predict equipment degradation and predicts future combustion system adjustments to maintain temperature uniformity. In practice, the tuning algorithm has shown the ability to push a furnace’s uniformity beyond its current certification class