Optimizing the Conveyor Belt Speed of a Bright Annealing Furnace

Abstract

A company’s growth is determined by an increase in its sales numbers and by a decrease in its expenditures. By doing this, the company attains a more significant profit (bottom line). In almost all manufacturing industries, annealing furnaces play a significant role. In this paper, an improvement in the operation of an annealing furnace used in a press shop is attempted. The press shop performs forging of watch cases, and annealing is performed in between every forging stage. This project focuses on increasing the productivity of the furnace by optimizing its conveyor belt speed. Experiments are conducted, and several annealed samples were collected for analysis. Furthermore, hardness and metallographic properties were also studied. With the help of regression plots of hardness and belt speed, and with the help of microstructures, an optimized belt speed was selected. The optimized belt speed is almost 42% more than the original speed used for production, hence increasing productivity.