Fives Solios offers a complete range of batch process billet homogenising furnaces for the refining of aluminium billets after production by casting. We offer customer specific designs to suit a variety of load configurations, heating cycles, metal alloy criteria and the clients layout needs.
Our complete integrated solution includes Billet handling equipment, stacking equipment, furnace charge/discharge cars sourced from experts in the field of mechanical handling. We also supply cooling chambers for rapid cooling of heated Billets after the Homogenising process, this enables the Billets to be discharged from the Homogenising furnaces earlier with the cooling cycle being made in the cooling chamber, allowing for a fresh load to be charged into the furnace.
Supplied by 
(Stein Atkinson Stordy),
previous name of Solios Thermal
The key features of our Billet Homogenising are:
We can use multi-zone control for temperature, pressure and air circulation.
Multi fuel capability (gas or oil).
Use of self-recuperative gas burners with simple firing controls resulting in compact furnace mounted piping/ducting system.
Direct coupled, self cooling – recirculation fans for compact roof arrangements, invertor controlled for optimised speed control.
Double heat seal door reduce furnace heat losses
Gas tight explosion relief panels
Complete billet handling equipment, stacking equipment and charge/discharge car sub-supply and control integration.
Process control systems provided in PC/PLC based systems designed by our “in house” systems team, with continued development of the Solios Thermal predictive temperature model software reducing the requirement for load thermocouples.
Complete integrated exhaust systems including zone pressure control dampers.
Recipe based control systems allow various heating cycles to be chosen.
Forced air cooling chambers for rapid billet cooling.
Typical performance characteristics:
Reference Billet load – 150 mm diamater x 8 000 mm (10 billets high x 13 billets wide).
Heat to 590 Deg. C+/- 10 in 4.0 hours
Heat Head 620 Deg. C
Fuel usage (with gas heating) during homogenising 190 kWh/t and 12 kWh/t
(Electrical for motors, instrumentation, etc..)
Homogenising - achievable Billet temperature uniformity +/- 3 Deg C.
