Solar Manufacturing has delivered a vacuum purge/gas nitriding furnace to Winston Heat Treating. The furnace has a rapid furnace heating rate of one hour to nitriding temperature and has an equally fast cooling rate back to ambient temperature with an assisted recirculating heat exchanger and 30-hp radial inert-gas blower. Solar Manufacturing has filed a U.S. patent disclosure covering numerous aspects of the furnace.

The furnace utilizes Super Systems electronic digital process-control instrumentation for temperature, vacuum and nitriding dissociation-rate calculation. According to Solar, the furnace is efficient with electric power consumption less than .75 watts per square inch of the hot zone internal heated area.