Nine Major System Compositions of the Whole Production Line

1. Automatic Material Separating & Feeding Roller Table System

It consists of post-forging axle buffer rack, material shifting & separating mechanism and axial alignment positioning device. Photoelectric sensing identifies axles of different lengths and diameters to feed workpieces one by one or multiple pieces synchronously, preventing collision and scratching on journals and flanges.

2. Walking Beam Quenching Heating Furnace (Core Heating Unit)

Fixed supporting beams and hydraulically synchronized movable walking beams perform cyclic actions of lifting, horizontal moving, lowering and resetting alternately. The axles are supported overhead at multiple points to realize synchronous heating on shaft body, flanges and journals. The furnace chamber is divided into three independent temperature control zones: preheating zone, heating-up zone and soaking holding zone. Two heating solutions are available: natural gas low-NOx flat flame burners and electric radiant tubes.

3. High-pressure Water Descaling Device before Quenching

High-pressure spray flushes forged oxide scales on axle surfaces to eliminate quenching soft spots and surface pitting defects, ensuring integral cooling uniformity.

4. Sinking Integral Quenching Tank Mechanism

Two cooling structures are available: immersion type and side spray type. The quenching tank is equipped with a high-power stirring system, and the cooling medium can be clean water or PAG water-soluble quenching liquid. Workpieces enter the cooling medium completely within 10 seconds after discharging from the furnace, with controllable and uniform cooling speed to restrain axle bending deformation.

5. Intermediate Water Draining & Transfer Roller Table

Quenched axles are turned over to drain residual water, buffered and transferred, automatically adjusted to the correct axial posture before being steadily sent to the feeding end of the tempering furnace.

6. Walking Beam Tempering Holding Furnace

It adopts the same walking beam conveying structure as the quenching furnace, equipped with high-temperature hot air circulating fans inside the furnace chamber to realize uniform temperature distribution in the whole area. It fully relieves residual quenching stress and matches the strength and fatigue toughness of axles.

7. Walking Beam Air Slow Cooling Bed

Axles are cooled by graded low-speed forced air after tempering to avoid new residual stress caused by rapid cooling, guaranteeing fatigue life and low-temperature impact performance.

8. Circulating Water Treatment & Flue Gas Waste Heat Recovery System

The quenching cooling medium is filtered and recycled in a closed loop. Flue gas from furnaces is collected for heat exchange to preheat combustion-supporting air, reducing total fuel consumption by 25%~32%.

9. Distributed PLC Automatic Electrical Control System

A central touch screen monitors real-time data including furnace temperature, walking cycle, quenchant concentration, water pressure and equipment faults across the whole line. Multiple sets of pre-stored process formulas for different steel grades are available, heat treatment curves are automatically saved to support remote data access and process traceability.