One of the largest furnace manufacturers is Trymax Furnaces Pvt. Ltd. We manufacture and export different types of furnaces including reheating furnaces, forging furnaces, as well as heat treatment furnaces and electric furnaces customized to your individual needs. Our furnaces offer higher optimised fuel consumption, making them ideal for your mills.
In steel rolling mills, a furnace is used to reheat semi-finished steel products such as billets, blooms, and slabs. The product is then subjected to annealing, hardening, normalizing and tempering process, which will harden and make the steel a bit flexible and stronger, allowing for a longer use.
In this blog, we discuss the different types of furnaces and their uses in hot steel rolling mills.
What are the different types of furnaces?
There are various types of furnaces used in the steel industry; here are some of them:
Reheating Furnaces
Reheating furnaces are used in hot steel rolling mills to reheat semi-finished steel pieces in the form of billets, blooms, or slabs until they are soft enough to be shaped or rolled into rods, bars, or sheets.
Mainly, 3 types of furnaces come under this category:
- Pusher-type Billet Reheating Furnace
Billets are pieces of semi-finished steel, square or rectangular in shape and are reheated to be rolled and used in products like rods, bars, wires, and pipes. The pusher-type billet reheating furnace has a hydraulic pusher that pushes the billets onto a roller table that takes them into the furnace.
This type of furnace has a series of heating zones, which helps control the temperature. Once the billets have been fully reheated the discharge ejector pushes the hot billets out of the furnace, allowing for a constant pour.
- Walking Beam Type Reheating Furnace
The walking beam type reheating furnace is a type of reheating furnace which transfers the steel billets or slabs, by being lifted, and moved forward instead of being pushed.
The walking beam mechanism is comprised of two sets of beams, one set lifts and transfers the metal, while the second set remains to hold the metal in place.Once loaded into the furnace, the metal only advances one small step at a time to allow for the same heat distribution.
This type of furnace can reheat large amounts of steel, so it is mostly used to reheat steel products that will be constructed into larger machinery or equipment. It is applicable for the construction industry.
- Top and Bottom Fired Reheating Furnace
A top-and-bottom-fired reheating furnace is classified as a reheating furnace that places burners both above and below the billets or slabs to provide heat from both sides and use the full surface area to heat them simultaneously.
Why Choose Trymax Reheating Furnaces?
Trymax furnaces are among the top manufacturers of reheating furnaces in India.
Trymax furnaces offered on a roll mill reheating furnace have the following opportunities:
- Our reheating furnaces can heat up to 1 to 120 tons per hour (TPH), enabling you to accommodate both small and large production requirements.
- They can be designed to operate on a variety of fuels—oil, gas, and coal—providing various options based on your requirements.
- Our furnaces are designed to be energy efficient resulting in reduced energy consumption and costs while providing top performance levels.
- The steel billets are evenly heated in different zones at varying temperatures providing greater control with your temperature selection.
Heat Treatment Furnaces
Heat Treatment Furnaces are a type of industrial furnace designed to heat steel products to extreme temperatures, followed by slow cooling for the improvement of the strength characteristics of those products.
Commonly, heat treatment furnaces are used to perform annealing, hardening, normalising, tempering, and quenching processes on steel products to eliminate internal stresses, provide uniformity, and increase strength. depending on the product requirements.
The types of heat treatment furnaces include:
- Bogie Hearth Furnace
The bogie type heat treatment furnace is a type of heat treatment furnace that works on a bogie- a moving platform on wheels which is used to load and unload large and heavy steel parts into and from the furnace to improve their strength, flexibility or durability. It is primarily an annealing furnace but is also used in processes like normalising, stress relieving, tempering, etc.
At Trymax furnaces, our bogie hearth furnace can run manually, semi-automatically or fully automatically. Built from high-quality aluminium and stainless steel, these furnaces can be custom-designed based on what a company needs. Another benefit this furnace offers is that it saves power while working efficiently and can even operate at 220V like other common electric appliances..
- Roller hearth furnaces
A roller hearth furnace is a continuous type of furnace in which the steel parts are heated as they move through the furnace on rollers. The steel parts are placed on rollers, which take them inside the furnace for heating. The steel parts are evenly heated to the required temperature and then automatically taken out of the furnace by the rollers. This ensures continuous and consistent heating without delays.
These furnaces are used in the hardening process to heat the steel to a particular temperature. A roller hearth furnace is a heat treatment electric furnace using electricity, up to 440V, to generate heat in the furnace.
- Walking Beam heat treatment furnace
In this type of heat treatment furnace, the steel pieces are lifted and moved slowly through beams. These beams ensure the large pieces of steel get heated evenly in different zones. This furnace is mainly used for hardening and tempering of tube materials, along with tempering steel to make it more flexible to be used in springs.
Our walking beam furnace with a material loading capacity of more than 5000 kg can hold billets of length up to 12m!
This furnace uses 220V electricity, the same as other electric appliances and uses 5.6 kilowatts of power to heat up.
- Continuous Line Furnace
A continuous line furnace is a type of heat treatment furnace in which the steel pieces move into the furnace in a straight line through rollers, belts, or chains and are treated in different temperature zones inside the furnace. In this furnace, hardening and tempering of carbon steel strips and high tensile strips, as well as annealing of wires, are done. It is a continuous furnace where steel pieces continuously move in and out of the furnace.
Our continuous line furnace is built with durable aluminum and stainless steel, ensuring high precision and efficiency in industrial operations. Weighing up to 3000-4000 kg, this furnace is fully automatic and runs on electricity.
- Salt Bath Furnace
Salt Bath furnace is a special type of heat treatment furnace that uses molten salt to heat steel parts. The steel parts are dipped into hot salt, which quickly and evenly heats them. The parts are then removed and cooled or quenched, sometimes in water or oil.
This furnace is used in quenching and bluing of carbon steel strips. Weighing about 1500-2000kg, this furnace, made of aluminium, is a fully automatic electric heat treatment furnace.
- Chamber furnace
A chamber furnace is a box-shaped, insulated furnace with a door on the front and is used to heat steel parts for different heat treatment processes. The steel parts are placed inside the chamber either on a tray or on shelves, and when the door is closed, the furnace heats the entire chamber. These furnaces are used in curing, hardening, and tempering applications.
Why choose our heat treatment furnaces?
Trymax furnaces are one of the leading heat treatment furnace manufacturers, providing customised heating solutions tailored to your needs.
- Our industrial heat treat furnace solutions are specially designed to make metals stronger and are suitable for all kinds of heat treatment processes- annealing, hardening, tempering, normalising, stress relieving, and deliver an efficient heating performance at each stage and improve the durability of steel parts.
- Built using superior quality aluminium and stainless steel, our furnaces have increased durability and wear resistance.
- Our furnaces offer precise temperature control options for perfect heating and cooling as per the needs.
- Our industrial heat treat furnace options offer fuel efficiency, as most of our furnaces run on electricity and are fully automatic.
- Our furnaces are suitable for all kinds of heat treatment processes—annealing, hardening, tempering, normalizing, and stress relieving—deliver an efficient heating performance at each stage.
3. Soaking Pit Furnaces
A soaking pit furnace is an underground type of industrial furnace used mainly in the steel industry to heat large metal ingots (big blocks of metal) slowly and evenly before they are rolled or forged into other shapes. These metal ingots are cold on the inside and must be heated evenly. If only the outer surface is hot and the inside is still cold, the metal could crack or get damaged during rolling.
We offer custom soaking pits to fit your factory needs, where you can choose from different fuel types like gas or oil. You can get a tailored heating setup that matches your specific process.
Soaking pit furnaces ensure the entire ingot is heated evenly, not too hot outside and cold inside and are fuel efficient. Their recuperators are designed to trap heat inside and reduce waste.
Conclusion
Every furnace discussed—reheating, heat-treatment, or soaking pit—serves a unique step in shaping stronger, more durable steel, and Trymax Furnaces brings them all under one roof.
Relying on our in-house design-to-commissioning expertise since 2012, our custom-engineered systems offer uniform heating, fuel savings, and lower maintenance thanks to finely crafted recuperators and efficient energy controls.
Whether you need a walking-beam reheating line for high-tonnage rolling or a precision salt-bath unit to minimize the carburisation during quenching for precise steel quenching, partnering with Trymax Furnaces ensure your unique process, budget and sustainability targets are met—so you mill hotter, cleaner and smarter every day.