Electric Heaters for Heavy Engineering

Preheating for Forging and Fabrication

Heavy engineering operations often require preheating of large metal components before welding, bending, forging or heat treatment. Cartridge heaters, casted heaters and tubular heaters can provide localised or distributed heat to tooling, dies and workpieces.

Casted heaters are well suited to heavy tooling where the heater is cast directly into an aluminium or bronze block. This provides excellent thermal contact and uniform heat distribution across a large platen or die face. The cast block becomes the heater housing, protecting the element and spreading heat evenly.

High density cartridge heaters deliver concentrated heat into deep bores in heavy dies and tool blocks. When die temperatures must reach several hundred degrees Celsius, the watt density, bore fit and heater construction all affect performance and heater life.

Press and Die Heating

Hydraulic presses, forging presses and stamping equipment use heated dies for processes such as hot forming, warm forging and isothermal pressing. Cartridge heaters are inserted into drilled bores in the die. The heater pattern, zone layout and thermocouple placement determine the temperature uniformity across the die face.

For large dies with many heater zones, consistent heater quality across the batch is important. Variations in resistance, wattage or dimensional tolerance can create temperature non-uniformity that shows up as quality defects in the formed parts.

Heat Treatment Support

While UniTherm does not supply complete heat treatment furnaces, we supply heating elements and components used in furnace construction and maintenance. Open coil heaters, tubular elements and finned elements serve as replacement parts for industrial ovens and furnace assemblies. Porcelain heaters and ceramic heating elements provide insulated, high-temperature performance in specific furnace configurations.

Replacement elements for existing heat treatment equipment are a common application. Matching the element type, shape, wattage and termination to the existing furnace ensures a direct drop-in replacement.

Metalworking and Surface Treatment

Immersion heaters maintain the temperature of quench tanks, wash tanks and chemical treatment baths used in metalworking. Alkaline cleaning solutions, phosphating baths and rust-preventive dip tanks all require controlled temperatures for effective processing.

The sheath material must resist the specific chemistry. Stainless steel handles many aqueous solutions. Alkaline heating elements are designed for high-pH environments. For acidic or particularly aggressive chemicals, discuss the specific conditions with our team.

Large-Scale and High-Wattage Requirements

Heavy engineering applications often require higher wattages and physically larger heaters than lighter manufacturing. We can supply custom-manufactured heaters in extended lengths, higher watt densities and non-standard configurations to suit heavy equipment.