Furnace Controls Upgrade-“The Monty” Provides the Background

Recently furnace builder “Aichelin” offered a press release about upgrading the controls on one of their furnaces located at “SEW-Eurodrive” in Bruchsal, Germany. As it happens, “Gord Montgomery” of “The Monty Heat Treat News” had the opportunity to visit this facility in 2020 at which time we did a profile of this impressive heat treat facility-a profile which can be found below along with the “Aichelin” press release;

“AUGUST 2, 2026The AICHELIN dual-chamber continuous furnace at SEW-EURODRIVE Germany has been operating reliably in continuous service for many years. Regular maintenance and targeted modernization measures by AICHELIN Service GmbH ensure that the system always remains at the cutting edge of technology.

As part of the scheduled annual maintenance, the previously used KS98 compact controller was 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝘂𝗽𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗦𝗜𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗦 𝗦𝟳 – 𝟭𝟮𝟬𝟬 𝗣𝗟𝗖 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗜𝗖𝗛𝗘𝗟𝗜𝗡 𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴.”

“MAY 18, 2020; If you’re in the gear business you know SEW Eurodrive. If you’re in the heat treating business you probably also know SEW because their plants around the world generally include substantial heat treating departments. For these reasons we are very lucky to give you an in depth glimpse of the heat treat department at one of their larger facilities which is located in Bruchsal, Germany.”

The overall facility covers many acres, the heat treat department is relatively new-the furnaces you see below are approximately 10 years old were built and installed by Aichelin. What you see are multi chamber batch furnaces with oil quenching designed for case hardening of gears and shafts along with washers, tempers, charge cars, shotblasting equipment and a very complete lab-in short everything required to run a state of the art heat treating department. Even a cursory glance at these pictures will show you that this is a meticulously maintained heat treat which is very much in line with the whole plant. While this installation is fairly typical of the heat treat department of a major gear manufacturer we will also say that this is a finer example than many. May 18, 2020″