Air Bag Initiator Proofing System

Infrared Heating Technologies recently designed, manufactured, tested, and shipped a high impingement air convection indexing conveyor oven, forced ambient air cooler, and controls system for “proofing” automotive air bag initiators for a major automobile parts supplier. The oven, cooler, and controls system includes a double pitch roller chain slat indexing conveyance system with nesting positions for the air bag initiator parts, a dual convection heat zone oven section including ramp and soak temperature controlled heat zones, high flow impingent hot air from below the conveyor, an ambient forced-air high velocity impingement cool zone, and pneumatically actuated insulated oven doors with a cam follower tadpole gasket sealing system. The door openings also include silicone strips for holding heat inside the oven while the doors are in the open position during part indexing. The system is turn-key and includes all SCR, temperature, factory mutual approved over temperature, blower motor, and indexing conveyor motor speed indexing and dwell time controls. The indexing slat conveyance includes explosion relief nesting positions and steel containment rails located above each of the six rows of air bag initiators. The system also includes factory mutual approved differential pressure switches for monitoring the operation of the ramp recirculation blower, the soak recirculation blower, and the cooling blower, safety circuitry with E-Stop safety relay and dual channel monitoring, photo-eye sensors at both the load and unload positions for locating the parts and conveyor positions, and contact switches for locating the pneumatic door positions. The air bag initiator parts are “proven” by heating the air bag initiators to temperature, and then cooling the parts prior to unloading. Production rate is approximately six air bag initiator parts every two minutes. All heater elements are accessible and easily changed from the outside top of the oven. These systems can be designed with a PLC/HMI or with a remote I/O for interfacing with the customer PLC. A variety of PLC options are available including Allen Bradley, Automation Direct Koyo, Siemens, and others.

Infrared Heating Technologies manufactures a wide variety of custom industrial ovens, and industrial furnace systems for specific processes. Heating technologies include short wave electric infrared, medium wave electric infrared, long wave infrared, electric convection, gas fired convection, Silicon Carbide, Rod Over-Bend (ROB), and others. Infrared Heating Technologies manufacturing facility is located at 2010 HWY 58, Oak Ridge, TN 37830, and all custom heater, oven, and control systems are manufactured in the USA. Call (865) 574-9784 to speak with an applications engineer or email info@infraredheating.com with your specific machine and process requirements.