Industry brief

Heat Treatment

Furnace control and records that stand up to every customer audit.

What matters

What matters most

Heat treaters hold tight limits on time, temperature and atmosphere. Many work for aerospace and automotive customers who audit every detail. Furnaces must run safely, pass their accuracy and uniformity tests and prove that each load was treated correctly. One bad batch can mean scrapped parts and lost approvals.

Pyrometry compliance

Instruments, thermocouples and control loops must pass calibration, system accuracy tests and temperature uniformity surveys. Well-designed control and recording make those tests easier to pass and to prove.

Records that pass audit

Every load needs a complete, tamper-evident record of time, temperature and atmosphere, linked to the parts and recipe used, and ready to show a customer or Nadcap auditor.

Furnace safety

Burners, fuel trains, vacuum systems and flammable or toxic atmospheres need purge, flame and interlock protection that is designed and proven to the level your risk assessment demands.

Repeatable, controlled cycles

Operators should be able to load a recipe and trust it. Controlled recipe management, clear displays and alarms on any deviation keep every cycle the same, shift after shift.

Solutions

Solutions for Heat Treatment

Matrix delivered the control system for a vacuum furnace. Vacuum furnaces combine pumping, heating and cooling in one tightly sequenced cycle, and their control must give repeatable results and a clear record of every load.

01Vacuum furnaces

02Atmosphere and sealed-quench furnaces

03Tempering, annealing and ageing ovens

04Burner management and combustion control

05Recipe management and load traceability

06Temperature recording and pyrometry data

How we help

What we bring to Heat Treatment

Furnace downtime is lost production, and changes to controls can trigger new surveys and tests. We plan upgrades around your schedule, prove recipes and logic against a simulation before site, and schedule commissioning around the tests needed to requalify each furnace. You get the design, code and documentation to run and maintain the system yourselves.

Upgrades

Standards

The standards that shape your project

The standards listed are those most often relevant to control-system work in this sector. Which apply to your project, and how, is agreed with you at specification stage.

Standard	What it covers	How we work with it
AMS2750	SAE aerospace pyrometry specification: sensors, instruments, calibration, accuracy tests and uniformity surveys.	Instruments, thermocouples and recording designed to meet each furnace's class and instrumentation type.
AIAG CQI-9	Heat Treat System Assessment, used by automotive customers to audit heat treaters.	Process monitoring, alarms and records designed around the requirements your customers audit.
Nadcap heat treating (AC7102)	Audit criteria for Nadcap heat treating accreditation, required by many aerospace customers.	Recipe control and secure electronic records that support the evidence your Nadcap audit examines.
BS EN 746-1, BS EN ISO 13577-2 and -4	Safety of industrial furnaces: general requirements, combustion and fuel handling, and protective systems.	Burner management, purging and furnace protective systems designed to their requirements.
BS EN 60204-1	Safety of machinery: electrical equipment of machines, including stopping and emergency stop.	Control panels and machine electrics designed to it and verified before and after installation.
BS EN ISO 13849-1	Design of the safety-related parts of machine control systems, rated by performance level (PL).	Safety functions designed and verified to the performance level your risk assessment requires.