The present invention relates to a door structure of a heat treatment furnace which performs heat treatment of a workpiece.
In a process of manufacturing an automotive part or other machine structural parts, various heat treatments are performed on a workpiece in accordance with purposes such as improvement of strength of a member and improvement of abrasion resistance. It is required that the heat treatment furnace to perform the heat treatment of the workpiece should maintain a furnace interior in a predetermined atmosphere. In particular, at an entrance part of the heat treatment furnace for carrying in or carrying out the workpiece, a temperature difference between the furnace interior and a furnace exterior is large, and thus a structure of a door is required to have excellent airtightness and heat-insulating property in view of heat energy efficiency.
As a conventional door structure used for a heat treatment furnace, Patent Document 1 discloses a structure in which a lifting door using a cylinder is pressed to a furnace body. Patent Document 2 discloses a structure in which a hanging shield curtain having a flexibility and a heat resistance is provided. Patent Document 3 discloses a structure in which a sheet door with a high airtightness is provided.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Utility Model Application Publication No. S56-88100
Patent Document 2: Japanese Utility Model Application Publication No. S61-137652
Patent Document 3: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-161863
However, a structure in which a door is raised/lowered by using a cylinder as in Patent Document 1 and a structure in which a door is fixed by using a clamping mechanism have a problem of high cost or the like. Besides, application of a heat insulator on the door is necessary in order to block transfer of heat between a furnace interior and a furnace exterior. Therefore, a door structure becomes complicated and extensive, bringing about an increase in weight and an increase in occupied space.
Meanwhile, in a case where the door is made of a sheet as in Patent Document 2 and Patent Document 3, a door main body is light-weighted compared with a case of Patent Document 1, so that a cost for installing the door can be made low. However, door structures as in Patent Document 2 and Patent Document 3 are not sufficient in heat-insulating property, so that there is a problem of a bad heat energy efficiency.
The present invention is made in view of the above-described circumstances, and an object thereof is to provide a door for a heat treatment furnace which has a light-weighted and simple structure and has sufficient airtightness and heat-insulating property.
The present invention to solve the above-described problem is a door structure of a heat treatment furnace performing a heat treatment of a workpiece, the door structure having: a first opening member and a second opening member in which workpiece passing ports where the transferred workpiece passes are formed; and a sheet shutter which blocks an atmosphere by raising and lowering a sheet material, wherein the first opening member and the second opening member are disposed to face each other, and the sheet shutter has: a winding portion which winds the sheet material; and a shutter portion which is raised and lowered by an action of the winding portion, wherein the shutter portion is disposed between the first opening member and the second opening member and has a first sheet portion which covers the workpiece passing port of the first opening member and a second sheet portion which covers the workpiece passing port of the second opening member at a time that the shutter portion is closed, and it is configured that a gas storage portion in which gas flowing from a furnace interior is stored is formed between the first opening member and the second opening member at the time that the shutter portion is closed.
According to the present invention, it is possible to make a door of a heat treatment furnace have a light-weighted and simple structure, and sufficient airtightness and heat-insulating property can be secured.
A door structure of a heat treatment furnace according to the present invention is applied to a heat treatment furnace such as a heating furnace, a carburizing furnace, a quenching furnace, or a tempering furnace, for example. Hereinafter, as an embodiment of the present invention, there is described an embodiment in which the door structure according to the present invention is applied to a door of a continuous tempering furnace. Note that in this specification and drawings, the same reference numeral is given to a component having practically the same function, to thereby omit redundant explanation.
As illustrated in
On the entry side 1a of the furnace where the workpiece W is carried in and an exit side 1b of the furnace where the workpiece W is carried out, there are provided sheet shutters 10 which block atmospheres of the furnace interior and the furnace exterior. As illustrated in
Two opening members of a first opening member 14 and a second opening member 15 are provided at an installation position of the sheet shutter 10. Both the first opening member 14 and the second opening member 15 are provided vertically in relation to a furnace floor and are provided to face each other with a predetermined interval D. The interval D is provided appropriately in correspondence with a temperature difference between the furnace interior and the furnace exterior, the heat-insulating property the sheet material 11 has, or the like, and the interval D between the first opening member 14 and the second opening member 15 is preferably 10 mm or more in view of the heat-insulating property of the shutter portion 13.
As illustrated in
As illustrated in
As illustrated in
Further, as illustrated in
Note that setting the interval D between the first opening member 14 and the second opening member 15 to 10 mm or more enables the gas to intervene between the first sheet portion 11a and the second sheet portion 11b without allowing the sheet portions 11a, 11b to contact with each other even if the sheet portions 11a, 11b have some deflection, so that a heat-insulating property of the shutter portion 13 is secured.
The shaft 16 provided at the lower end of the shutter portion 13 is raised and lowered together with the sheet material 11, while rotating in the circumferential direction at the time of raising and lowering of the shutter portion 13. Since the shaft 16 is not fixed to another member, a tension in a vertical direction V is generated by the own weight of the shaft 16 in the sheet material 11. Thereby, the deflection of the sheet material 11 at the time that the sheet shutter 10 is closed is suppressed. Consequently, the shutter portion 13 becomes likely to closely adhere to each of the opening members 14, 15, so that the airtightness of the shutter portion 13 is improved. Further, in this embodiment, a length of the shaft 16 is larger than the entire width of the sheet material. Thereby, the tension in the vertical direction is generated in the sheet material 11 in the entire region in the furnace width direction at the time of the opening/closing action of the shutter portion 13, resulting in stable suppression of flip-flopping of the sheet material 11. Note that a shaft diameter is appropriately set to be able to secure the airtightness of the shutter portion 13 sufficiently, in consideration of the interval D between the first opening member 14 and the second opening member 15, a thickness of the sheet material 11, or the like.
As illustrated in
Further, as illustrated in
As described above, the door structure of the tempering furnace 1 according to this embodiment is a structure in which the first opening member 14, the first sheet portion 11a, the second sheet portion 11b, and the second opening member 15 are provided in sequence from the furnace interior side. Though in
Next, an action of the sheet shutter 10 of this embodiment will be described.
First, as illustrated in
After the action of carrying in/out the workpiece W is finished, a closing action of the shutter portion 13 is started as illustrated in
Subsequently, as illustrated in
As illustrated in
At this time, among surfaces on the furnace exterior side of the second sheet portion 11b, the surface around the workpiece passing port 15a is in contact with the furnace exterior atmosphere whose temperature is lower in relation to the furnace interior temperature. However, since there is a space between the first sheet portion 11a and the second sheet portion 11b, the first sheet portion 11a and the second sheet portion 11b are not in contact with each other in the neighborhood of the workpiece passing port 14a, resulting in that heat conduction due to contact does not occur between them. Meanwhile, though heat transfer to the furnace exterior occurs via the second sheet portion 11b, a decrease of the atmospheric temperature of the gas storage portion 17 via the second sheet portion 11b takes time because high-temperature gas of the furnace interior is stored in the gas storage portion 17. In other words, a temperature difference between the atmospheric temperature of the furnace interior and the atmospheric temperature of the gas storage portion 17 is smaller compared with a temperature difference between the furnace interior and the furnace exterior. Therefore, heat loss from the furnace interior to the gas storage portion 17 via the first sheet portion 11a is suppressed, making it easy to keep the furnace interior temperature high.
As described above, by making the sheet shutter 10 have the double structure and the structure in which the interval exists between the first sheet portion 11a and the second sheet portion 11b as in this embodiment, it becomes possible to make the door structure simpler than conventional structures and to secure sufficient airtightness and heat-insulating property.
Note that in this embodiment the door structure having the sheet shutter 10 and the opening members 14, 15 is each provided in the entry side 1a and the exist side 1b of the furnace, but a position at which the door structure is provided is not limited to the entry side 1a or the exist side 1b of the furnace. For example, there are cases where a plurality of processing chambers are provided in a furnace, depending on a structure of a continuous furnace. In the case of such a structure, a temperature difference or a pressure difference sometimes occurs between the adjacent processing chambers in the furnace. The door structure of the embodiment described above can be adopted also as a partition door to separate atmospheres of such processing chambers. In this case, a sheet material 11 is pressed to the adjacent processing chamber from a side of the chamber having a positive pressure in relation to the adjacent processing chamber, to thereby enable securing an airtightness and a heat-insulating property. However, the door structure according to this embodiment attains a more prominent effect when provided in a place to block atmospheres having a large temperature difference, and it is more preferable that the door structure of this embodiment is provided in at least either one of an entry side 1a of a furnace where a workpiece W is carried in and an exist side 1b of the furnace where the workpiece is carried out.
Further, in this embodiment, the shaft 16 is provided between the first opening member 14 and the second opening member 15 as a sheet weight. However, even if the shaft 16 is not provided, the airtightness of the shutter portion 13 can be secured by appropriately setting the interval D between the first opening member 14 and the second opening member 15, a smoothness of each of the opening members 14, 15, a thickness of the sheet material 11, a smoothness of the sheet material 11, or the like. However, in view of improvement of the airtightness, it is preferable to provide the shaft 16 as the embodiment described above. Note that the shaft 16 may not be the cylindrical member as long as a long member is provided which enables the shutter portion 13 to closely adhere to each of the opening members 14, 15 sufficiently and functions as a sheet weight of the shutter portion 13.
Further, in this embodiment, the guide pipe 18 is provided between the first sheet portion 11a and the second sheet portion 11b. However, even if the guide pipe 18 is not provided, the airtightness of the shutter portion 13 can be secured by appropriately setting the interval D between the first opening member 14 and the second opening member 15, a position of the winding portion 12 of the sheet material 11, or the like. However, in view of improvement of the airtightness, it is preferable to provide the guide pipe 18. Further, in this embodiment the pipe is used as the guide member, but it is possible to use a roller rotatable in a circumference direction as the guide member. Further, the guide member is not necessarily required to be cylindrical. That is, the airtightness can be improved by providing a guide member which can suppress floating of the first sheet portion 11a and the second sheet portion 11b between the first sheet portion 11a and the second sheet portion 11b and above the workpiece passing ports 14a, 15a of the first opening member 14 and the second opening member 15.
Hereinabove, the embodiment of the present invention was described, but the present invention is not limited to such an example. It is obvious that a person skilled in the art can devise various modification examples or correction examples within a scope of technical ideas described in claims, and it is a matter of course that those examples should also be understood to belong to the technical scope of the present invention.
For example, in the above-described embodiment, one sheet material 11 is folded to form the first sheet portion 11a and the second sheet portion 11b. However, as illustrate in
A door structure of a heat treatment furnace according to the present invention was adopted as a door structure of an entry side and an exist side of a continuous tempering furnace and a tempering treatment of a workpiece was carried out. The door structure according to the present invention is a structure illustrated in
As listed in Table 1, in the tempering furnace using the door structure according to the present invention, the heating up time until reaching the soaking temperature was within a range of the target value. Further, since the door structure has the sufficient heat-insulating property, the target time was able to be attained also in terms of the soaking time. The overshoot temperature was also at an acceptable level. In other words, when the door structure according to the present invention is used, the structure can be made simpler than that of the conventional furnace and a heat-insulating property at the level of the conventional furnace can be secured.
The present invention is applicable to a tempering furnace which carries out a tempering treatment of a workpiece.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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2016-061800 | Mar 2016 | JP | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
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PCT/JP2017/011210 | 3/21/2017 | WO | 00 |
Publishing Document | Publishing Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
WO2017/164170 | 9/28/2017 | WO | A |
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
3760792 | White | Sep 1973 | A |
8182263 | Choi | May 2012 | B2 |
9637974 | Thompson | May 2017 | B2 |
20040161721 | Patel et al. | Aug 2004 | A1 |
Number | Date | Country |
---|---|---|
615977 | Feb 1980 | CH |
56-88100 | Jul 1981 | JP |
58-180268 | Dec 1983 | JP |
61-137652 | Aug 1986 | JP |
2000-161863 | Jun 2000 | JP |
2007-187398 | Jul 2007 | JP |
2010-43795 | Feb 2010 | JP |
Entry |
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Official Communication issued in International Bureau of WIPO Patent Application No. PCT/JP2017/011210, dated Jun. 20, 2017, along with an english translation thereof. |
Foreign Office Action issued in India Application No. 201817033369, dated Jun. 19, 2020. |
Number | Date | Country | |
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20190024979 A1 | Jan 2019 | US |