Continuous furnace facilities
Inside a horizontal HICON floater furnace, the aluminum strip is transported through the entire facility on a cushion of heated air; this cushion is provided by the special HICON atmosphere recirculation system, without the strip coming into contact with any furnace component.
Thanks to a newly-developed jet nozzle system, both the rate of thermal transfer and the load capacity have been increased. This achieves a considerable boost to throughput, especially with thick strips.
Once the solution temperature and soaking time have been reached, the strip is quenched rapidly and precisely in a combined water/air quench. This delivers the necessary cooling gradients and tensile strengths for different strip thickness and different alloy groups, while ensuring that the strip that leaves the quench is both flat and dry.
