Automation solution of an electric furnace for personalized thermal treatments

There are a variety types of heat treatment furnaces available, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Choosing the right type of furnace, depends on a number of factors, such as: the type of material to be treated, the temperature and the duration of the heat treatment required. In this paper, a laboratory solution for automation an electric heat treatment furnace is presented. The proposed solution offers the possibility to configure operating parameters: temperature and time. The novelty of the proposed solution is represented by the possibility of implementing (with minimal costs and structural changes) a digital control on any type of electric heat treatment furnace. By using two temperature sensors, we want to obtain a better temperature monitoring, eliminating the effects caused by the malfunction of one of the sensors. At the same time, the digital temperature control, with a resolution of 0.25°C, results in an electricity saving compared to the classic bimetal sensor control.