Seco/Warwick has recently commissioned a 3.96 ton per hour capacity Walking Beam Furnace at NHK Springs India Ltd., Andhra Pradesh, India.

Sławomir Woźniak, executive director (Asia) at Seco/Warwick commented, "Thanks to this tailor made solution, NHK Springs can achieve higher productivity with a lower cycle time, better quality and minimum rejections with the ejector mechanism. We are pleased to work with NHK Springs to develop a solution that best suits the application and customer expectations."

NHK Spring India Ltd. is a manufacturer of automotive suspension components for passenger cars, commercial vehicles and utility vehicles that will use this solution for mass production. Walking beam systems made by Seco/Warwick for spring applications are best suited to the automotive and railway industries.

Manoj Gupta, DGM (Projects), NHK Springs India Ltd. added: "We are pleased to partner with Seco/Warwick whose expertise in both emerging technologies as well as reliable standard solutions to deliver best products to our customers. The Walking Beam Furnace supplied by Seco/Warwick is technologically advanced with a specially designed ejector mechanism for better quality end products. The Seco/Warwick team also provides technical and service support that we demand to keep our operation running smoothly."

The Seco/Warwick Walking Beam solution is custom designed for the heat treatment of leaf springs, especially those with eyes on the end (parabolic and berlin). Leaves are passed through a furnace by means of walking beam mechanism, which is custom-designed for a low cycle time of 9 seconds. Leaves are then discharged through a drop down ejector instead of a conventional type of rollers. This mechanism has an advantage over rollers, as rollers can sometimes damage the leaves' eyes during discharge. The drop down ejector mechanism places leaves on scissor lifts, which then go to conveyors for further processing.

Seco/Warwick's Walking Beam System is equipped with dual-fired burners, automatic ignition system, flame monitoring system, furnace pressure monitoring system, highly equipped gas train system with mass flow meter, oil pumping system and hydraulic systems. The dual fuel system will enable NHK to stay in continuous production in case of short supply/unavailability of any one fuel with minimum switchover time. The furnace operation is controlled by PLC except for loading of leaves on charging end. This ensures auto control and close monitoring of system parameters which in turn assures better quality of processed materials. Unique furnace design and temperature control systems results in fast heating rates with close temperature uniformity within load.