Most engineers do not start with the furnace. They start with a material and a property target. Then they work backwards to the process. Then to the equipment. That last step is choosing the right furnace type where the wrong selection costs you yield, quality, and uptime. A muffle furnace cannot do what a bogie hearth does. A tubular furnace is built for a completely different job than a vacuum furnace. At Tempsens, with over three decades in thermal solutions across 75+ countries, we manufacture furnaces across 14 types. This guide is that last step made simple.
What Is Heat Treatment?
Heat treatment is the process of heating a metal or alloy to a specific temperature, holding it there for a set amount of time, and then cooling it in a controlled way. The goal is to change the material’s internal structure, its grain size, hardness, ductility, or toughness without changing its shape. The same piece of steel can be made hard and wear-resistant through hardening, or soft and easy to machine through annealing, depending entirely on how it is heated and cooled. That controlled heating and cooling is what separates a precision-engineered component from raw material.
Why Furnace Type Is a Process Decision
Heat treatment covers annealing, hardening, tempering, normalising, sintering, and carburising each with its own temperature window, atmosphere requirement, loading method, and cooling rate. Your furnace has to hit every one of those parameters, cycle after cycle, without drift.
Tempsens furnaces are engineered around all three heat transfer modes: conduction, convection, and radiation with NABL-certified thermocouples and programmable PID controllers as standard. Your process parameters are not just set. They are held.
Laboröfen
Muffle Furnace — MF Series | Up to 1200°C
The workpiece sits inside a silicon carbide muffle, fully shielded from heating elements. No contamination, uniform heating, long element life with FeCrAl. The sideways door with a limit switch cuts power the moment it opens. Used for annealing, hardening, tempering, stress relieving, and material testing in labs, research facilities, and small production setups.
High Temperature Furnace — HTF Series |1400°C to 1800°C
When standard temperatures are not enough, the HTF takes over. MoSi2 elements and Type B thermocouples deliver stable, even heat at the upper end. Used for sintering advanced ceramics, glass melting, powder metallurgy, fusion, and firing processes where lower-range furnaces simply cannot perform.
Tubular Furnace — TF Series | 1200°C to 1800°C
Material is processed inside a high-density alumina or quartz ceramic tube, giving precise atmosphere control at the sample level. Three configurations: Split Tube (STF) for easy tube
changes, Vertical Split (VSTF) for mechanical testing, and Rotary Split (RSTF) for continuous material feed. Accuracy: ±1°C. Used for CVD, catalyst research, sintering, and thermocouple calibration.
Vacuum Furnace — LVF Series | 1600°C to 3000°C
Tempsens LVF Series removes air entirely from the chamber. No oxygen means no oxidation, no contamination, no unwanted surface reactions. The LVF 1600 uses Molybdenum elements; the LVF 2300 uses Tungsten; the LVF 3000 uses Graphite to reach 3000°C. Water-cooled jacket keeps the outer skin near ambient. Built for sintering, degassing, pyrolysis, and MIM/CIM processes.
Industrieöfen
Box / Chamber Furnace — CF Series | 900°C to 1800°C
The workhorse of industrial heat treatment. Front-loading, batch operation, and a temperature range that covers almost every standard process make the CF Series the most versatile furnace in the range. Five models span 900°C to 1800°C with matched thermocouple types — K (NiCr) at the low end, B (MoSi2) at the top. Handles annealing, hardening, tempering, normalising, sintering, billet heating, and die heating. Side-way opening door keeps the heated surface away from operators. Vacuum pump integration and gas purging available across all models.
Bogie Hearth Furnace — BHF Series | 900°C to 1600°C
Tempsens BHF Series is built for large, heavy workloads where fixed-hearth loading is not practical. The hearth is a wheeled bogie on tracks. The charge is loaded outside using an overhead crane or forklift, then pushed in. Automatic swivel or vertical lifting door with a limit switch for safety. Used for post-weld heat treatment, stress relieving, normalising, and sintering of large fabrications.
Annealing Furnace — AF Series | up to 1200°C
A continuous conveyor belt carries material through multiple heating zones. Corrugated metallic muffles handle thermal expansion without warping. Adjustable conveyor speed gives engineers control over soak time. Used for continuous annealing of metals, ceramics, and glass, plus curing, drying, and crystalline transformations.
Microwave Furnace — MWF Series | up to 1600°C
The energy created by a microwave penetrates directly into the object being heated and heats the object from within, without relying upon the walls of the chamber to transfer heat to it. As such, microwave heating results in much
faster heating rates, greater energy efficiency, and more uniform heating than conventional resistance furnaces. The Tempsens Hybrid Microwave Furnace (HMWF) takes this further by combining convection, radiation, and microwave heating in a single unit giving extremely fast cycle times with excellent process control. Used for sintering, calcination, drying, and semiconductor manufacturing.
The 4 Core Heat Treatment Processes
- Glühen: Heat above recrystallisation temperature, cool slowly. Reduces hardness, relieves stress, improves ductility.
- Hardening: Heat above critical temperature, quench rapidly. Maximum hardness and wear resistance.
- Tempering: Reheat a hardened part to sub-critical temperature. Reduces brittleness while retaining hardness.
- Normalising: Heat above critical range, air cool. Refines grain structure, improves mechanical uniformity.
Tempsens NABL-certified thermocouples and programmable PID controllers come standard with every furnace model ensuring these processes hit their targets and hold them, cycle after cycle.
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Häufig gestellte fragen
What kinds of furnaces are used for heat treatment?
The main types include muffle, high temperature, tubular, vacuum, box/chamber, bogie hearth, annealing, pit, and microwave furnaces. Tempsens manufactures all of these across laboratory and industrial scales.
Which four forms of heat treatment are there?
Annealing (softening through slow cooling), hardening (rapid quench for maximum hardness), tempering (reducing brittleness after hardening), and normalising (grain refinement through air cooling).
What kinds of furnaces are there?
Furnaces are classified by operating mode (batch or continuous), loading method (front, bottom, top, bogie, or conveyor), and heating technology (resistance, vacuum, or microwave). Each serves specific temperature ranges and process requirements.
Which kind of furnace is most prevalent?
Box/chamber furnaces are the most widely used in industrial heat treatment due to their flexibility and wide temperature range. For laboratory use, muffle furnaces are the most common starting point.
A three-stage furnace: what is it?
A continuous furnace with three thermal zones: preheating, main heating and soaking, and controlled cooling. The Tempsens AF Series follows this principle with adjustable zone lengths and temperatures.
