STATE OF THE ART INTEGRATED HEAT TREATMENT CELL FOR TODAY'S MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENT

摘要

With today's production control philosophies it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify heat-treat processing at locations divorced from the primary manufacturing arena. Inclusion of heat treatment in the manufacturing cell has become more desirable. To this end, a compact integrated heat treatment cell with a relatively small footprint is proposed. This will comprise totally automated versatile heating, quenching, and tempering facilities with in line gauging and computer control of critical parameters to achieve close dimensional and hardness tolerances. This paper provides a conceptual layout that could be used for the automated heat treatment of symmetrical components such as bearing or gear rings, with a general description of some of the technologies envisaged. Topics include the basics of heating with high frequency induction and enhanced magnetic methods, quenching techniques including the use of high pressure water sprays, state of the art robotic gauging and hardness measurement, and continuous feedback recipe control using the latest in-line modeling techniques.