High temperature fans play a critical role in both upstream and downstream aluminum production processes to ensure final products achieve optimum material properties, low deformation, and minimal residual stress.
The right, high quality air-moving equipment ensures process stability (including oxidation prevention), energy efficiency, and operational reliability to maintain product quality and minimize cost. Inferior quality or incorrect fan selection can lead to inefficient operations at best and extensive lost production from unplanned downtime & excessive quality waste at worst. The role of fans is even more important where electric heating sources are being considered.
IGE's production-proven designs with innovative shaft sealing methods are critical in the production of aluminum extrusions, aluminum forgings, aluminum castings, and aluminum foil.
Homogenizing furnaces play a crucial role in the aluminum production process, particularly in the treatment of aluminum alloys. These furnaces are designed to heat aluminum billets or slabs to high temperatures, enabling uniform distribution of alloying elements and the reduction of internal stresses.
These furnaces typically utilize axial flow high temperature fans that are 48-85 inch diameter and reversible, which enables better efficiency, lower cost, and improved uniformity of the load. IGE has a wide range of production-proven designs that can handle the increased stresses of reversible operation. IGE also has non-reversible designs more suitable to continuous furnaces (vs. batch).
IGE commonly rebuilds other manufacturer's homogenizer fans to bring them up to our standards for reliability and energy efficiency and proudly offers a 2-year warranty on rebuilds.
Aluminum coil annealing furnaces
These furnaces are designed to relieve internal stresses and improve the workability of aluminum coils before they begin subsequent manufacturing steps. Furnaces can be designed for single coil or multiple coil treating.
Significant airflow is required to ensure temperature uniformity and effective convective heat transfer. 48-85-inch single-direction axial fans are commonly used as are large forward-curved centrifugal fans.
The right, high quality IGE fan for the application avoids overheating of coil edges, minimizes cycle time, and maintains process & atmosphere uniformity - supported by innovative shaft sealing methods to prevent oxidation in nitrogen atmosphere environments.
Aluminum foil coils can also be annealed in similar furnaces, but designed to take a larger number of smaller, lighter coils.
Aluminum heat treating
Heat treating furnaces play a critical role in enhancing the performance, durability, and versatility of aluminum extrusions, aluminum forgings, and aluminum castings. These processes can improve strength, relieve internal stresses, improve workability, enhance corrosion resistance, ensure compatibility with other processes (e.g., welding or joining), and create uniform parts with precise control of microstructure.
IGE has air moving solutions for all aluminum heat treating applications and has spent the last century refining and problem solving. Whether it's managing sand in the airstream in a combined solution anneal & sand cast removal process or trying to improve energy efficiency in a batch or continuous line, IGE has the expertise to support you.
Ingot, billet & slab reheat & preheat furnaces
These furnaces are commonly used to bring aluminum materials to the optimal temperature for deformation processes such as extruding, forging, or hot rolling.
Depending on the process, reversible axial fans are commonly used to ensure effective convective heat transfer and promote homogenization. IGE's 7-blade and 10-blade reversing axial fans ensure your processes are maximizing energy efficiency, minimizing cycle time, and ensuring reliable operation.
Aluminum brazing furnaces
Aluminum brazing is common in the manufacture of radiators and other heat exchanger applications in the automotive, aerospace, HVAC, and electronics industries.
Brazing requires very tight atmosphere control given extreme sensitivity to any introduction of oxygen into the process. IGE's innovative shaft sealing methods ensure atmosphere and process conditions are maintained with capability to offer seal effectiveness typically used in vacuum applications. IGE also has solutions to challenges created by excessive flux build up and presence in the circulated atmosphere, including designs that enable on-the-fly rebalancing to maintain uptime in a continuous furnace application.
