If you have spent any time around manufacturing you have probably run into the concept of heat treatment along the way. Whether it is something small like a desktop furnace for knife making, or a large industrial furnace for aerospace parts with complex recipes and multiple operations, heat treatment is a very common manufacturing operation.

While heat treatment isn’t the flashiest industry in the world, it is one of the most important. Products we use nearly every day like knives, cars, airplanes, even basic hand tools like pliers all have some heat treatment involved in their manufacture.

The Technological Revolution

In many heat treatment plants, you’ll find a furnace that has been chugging along for 10-15 years or more, still making great parts with only once or twice a year maintenance required. Inside the panel might be a PLC, but will likely find a lot of hardwired relay logic that hasn’t been changed since the as-builts were marked up when it was installed.

This probably works for most applications, but these furnaces tend to lag behind the rest of the facility in terms of automation, integration, and information. Think about the furnace in your house, it probably has an off the shelf controller with one button and a switch—and it just works…until it doesn’t. There are no alerts, you will simply wake up one morning in the winter watching your breath condense in the air, dreading the callout fee plus hourly rate plus hardware the furnace technician will charge you.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, most companies have built their furnace offerings as a turn-key solution with minimal modification required, or even available for that matter. This made a lot of sense when PLCs were really expensive, programming them was a hurdle, and the software to do anything useful was some of the most complex technological nonsense humanity has ever built. But, if it is a more modern setup, you might get lucky and see a system controlled with a Honeywell HC900.

With the prevalence of low cost, nearly infinite functionality systems like Ignition on the market, there is no reason NOT to use SCADA systems for heat treatment operations.

The New Era

In today’s world, adding a SCADA system like Ignition onto a furnace is relatively simple and gives you an immense amount of functionality. It enables you to do things with no extra cost like:

• Recipe Management

• Real-time Alarm and general process notifications

• Historical data collection with powerful trending capabilities

• Batch and part tracking, including traceability—all integrated with actual process variable data

• Simplified batch management, including pulling up work orders/lot numbers and loading furnace parameters automatically

• Automatic hold time calculations based on part dimensions to meet regulatory standards

• Overall process integration with the rest of your facility

You can even get more complex and look at things like energy usage, gas pressure, integration with utility billing and peak demand management systems, and even building dashboards for the plant to see the furnace operation in real-time without standing at the machine.

Yes, you will need to upgrade relay logic to use a PLC. But, this will give you an immense amount of flexibility if you want it. Or integrate with the HC900 controller you might already be using. The cost of this is minimal compared to the flexibility and benefits you will gain by using a SCADA system.

Yeah…BUT!

Obviously, we like integrating software and hardware, we like working with manufacturing companies, and we like software such as Inductive Automation’s Ignition which makes our job easier. But we realize there will be objections to our approach.

Common objections to upgrading heat treatment systems with automation platforms:

• The Honeywell HC900 does great temperature control, we can’t do that with a PLC - Yes you can! Using PID loops and Split Time-Range Proportional or Time Proportional Output logic (with the Opto22 for example)

• We don’t have controls people on staff - You don’t need them. Heat treatment systems are the easiest to commission and maintain remotely. We’ve done it plenty of times, even internationally!

• We have an old PLC and it doesn’t have a communication port - You are likely using one of the large controls companies in this space which haven’t updated their technology in 10 years. You can get better functionality, customer service, and results from Corso Systems.

• What about downtime? - How much downtime do you have now with outdated hardware and relay logic before you even realize you are down? SCADA can alert you in real-time when things aren’t right so you can act immediately.

• Automation is expensive - It can be, and it was 10-15 years ago. Hardware and software prices have gone down since then, and folks like Corso Systems can generally get systems converted, commissioned, and back into full production in a matter of a couple days with the right preparation work.

Your Next Steps

Heat treatment is a great place to start with automation because it is usually easy to convert, is a very repeatable process, and is usually one of the pillar process steps at any facility that utilizes it. Be sure to also see our Heat Treat Power Pack post for even more ways to get started.

You can set up heat treatment systems using PLCs that are fully compliant with NFPA 86 regulations, are safe, reliable, and easier to maintain than what you are using now. If you don’t have PLCs and SCADA systems in place at your facility, it’s time to find out how you can benefit from a SCADA solution for your process!