How to Operate a Muffle Furnace?

Muffle Furnace is mainly used for sintering, annealing, and chemical analysis of metals, non-metals, and other materials. Due to its excellent temperature control capability and its simple and safe operation, it has now become an important choice for heating equipment in laboratories and industry.

This article will give you a detailed introduction to the operating process of the muffle furnace.

About Muffle Furnace

Muffle furnaces mainly use the electrothermal effect, which generates heat through a current flowing through a heating element such as a resistance wire or a silicon carbon rod. This heat is transferred to the furnace using radiation, convection, and conduction to heat the workpiece placed in the furnace.

Characteristics of Muffle Furnace

● The box furnace adopts an advanced AI artificial intelligence adjustment algorithm, which can realize free heating and cooling control, and has operable commands such as running, suspending, and stopping.

● With overtemperature alarm, thermocouple break alarm system. It can automatically cut off the power supply, providing reliable protection.

● Has a large operating system. The operation is simple and the steps are clear. Can view the real-time dynamic heating and heating curves at any time.

Application field

Metal heating treatment: Muffle furnace can be used for metal annealing, quenching, tempering, and other heat treatment processes to improve the hardness, strength, and wear resistance of metal materials.

Ceramic industry: It is suitable for sintering ceramic products, deposition of sintered ceramic powder, heat treatment of ceramic materials, and other processes to improve the density, hardness, and heat resistance of ceramic products.

Laboratory: Muffle furnace is widely used in scientific research and laboratory for sample preparation, material structure and property analysis, and experiments under high-temperature atmospheres.

Electronics industry: It can be used for heat treatment of electronic components, such as welding, plastic sealing, and thermal aging tests of electronic components.

Glass industry: Be used for heat treatment of glass materials to improve the mechanical strength and heat resistance of glass.

Chemical industry: Muffle furnace can be used for thermal decomposition, catalytic reaction, REDOX, and other processes of chemical raw materials to improve the effect of chemical reactions and the quality of products.

Muffle Furnace Components

To properly use a muffle furnace, it is important to first understand its structure and composition. Muffle furnace (or box furnace) is a heating furnace with a box-shaped chamber and a simple overall structure.

During the entire heating process of heating, holding, and cooling of the workpieces, the workpieces are stationary and the feeding and discharging are carried out through a single door or slot.

Furnace Shell

Muffle furnace uses a vertical double-layer furnace shell. The inner layer of the furnace shell is stainless steel, and the outer layer is carbon steel, forming a mezzanine between the two layers.

The furnace shell after exquisite spraying, is not only corrosion-resistant but also acid and alkali resistant.

Furnace Chamber

Muffle Furnace from Brother Furnace adopts a polycrystalline mullite fiber furnace to form an effective thermal insulation layer, which is not only resistant to high temperatures but also has good thermal insulation performance.

Heating Element

According to the different requirements of customers, Brother Furnace offers a variety of heating elements: HRE resistance wire, SiC heater, and MoSi2 heater.

Thermocouples

Thermocouples are commonly used in temperature-measuring instruments.

The shapes of various thermocouples are different, but their basic structure is roughly the same, usually composed of the main parts such as a thermistor, insulating sleeve protection tube, and junction box.

Muffle Furnace Operation Process

1. Check the box furnace's all equipments are in good condition, and confirm the furnace chamber, heating element, and other parts status to normal.

2. Open the furnace door and take out the fire block. Carefully place the workpieces into the furnace to ensure that the workpieces are properly secured. (Be careful that the components do not exceed the maximum capacity of the furnace)

3. Muffle Furnace contains 50 segments of programmable and PID auto control system, setting relevant parameters according to needs.

4. Power on and observe the program.

5. After confirming that the temperature reaches the safe value, open the furnace door and carefully remove the workpieces to avoid heat damage or scratching the surface.

Brother Furnace is committed to providing customers with the best quality products and pre-sales and after-sales service.

Taking into account the needs of customers, we will also provide more detailed operating instructions and installation and commissioning of the necessary drawings, circuit diagrams, gas diagrams, equipment drawings, etc.

Precautions

● It is forbidden to heat flammable and explosive substances. New electric furnaces, or electric furnaces that have not been used for a long time, should be sintered 1-2 times with waste zirconium blocks before normal use to eliminate moisture in the furnace and ensure the effect.

● To protect the cleanliness and integrity of the furnace, please choose appropriate materials.

● This furnace uses a special high-purity electric heating wire. To ensure the effect, please choose the original parts for later maintenance and replacement.

● It is strictly forbidden to disassemble the furnace and distribution box of the electric furnace at will, so as not to cause circuit failure.

● It is recommended that the temperature in the furnace is cooled to 300 degrees or less before opening the furnace door, otherwise the cold air will cause thermal shock to the refractory material, or cause cracks in the furnace lining.

● Check the contact of the electrical connection part of the temperature control system regularly. The input power shall not exceed the rated power and the furnace temperature shall not exceed the rated temperature.

Frequently Asked Questions and Treatment Methods

1. When the control power switch “lock” is turned on, there is no power supply.

Check whether the power is short-circuit. If the power is not short-circuit, replace the fuse.

2. Meter SV alternately displays “OraL”

Replace the thermocouple.

3. The red “Open circuit” indicator is on.

Check whether there is a short-circuit in the box furnace. If there is no short-circuit, replace the fuse and observe the situation.

Within the shelf life, if the muffle furnace has any failure that can not be treated (except heating elements, thermocouples, sealing rings, vacuum pump oil, and other vulnerable parts), welcome to contact Brother Furnace at any time.We will reply within 2 hours, and send personnel to the scene within 72 hours to organize maintenance.

Brother Furnace promises to always take the customer's needs as the core. Looking forward to your cooperation!