Heat Treatment Vessel Coupler with Spacer Gaps for Furnace Conveying
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing heat treatment vessel couplers for rectangular box-shaped vessels in heat treatment furnaces face issues with meandering, variability in progress, and deterioration of atmospheric circulation, leading to inefficiencies and difficulty in separating vessels after treatment.
Innovation Solution
A coupler with a plate body, engagement protrusions, and a spacer protrusion that forms gaps between vessels to restrict meandering and variability, facilitating easy separation and maintaining atmospheric circulation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Stability of the object's composition
If heat treatment vessels are coupled in contact without gap, then meandering is suppressed, but atmospheric circulation deteriorates and separation becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a coupler as an intermediary component between heat treatment vessels. This coupler has a plate body that contacts both vessels, with engagement protrusions that fit into engagement holes in the vessels. The coupler maintains stable coupling while allowing atmospheric circulation through its design, and enables easy separation by lifting the coupler vertically without requiring forceful separation of the vessels themselves.
Solution Approach 2:
The coupling system is segmented into three distinct components: the first heat treatment vessel, the coupler, and the second heat treatment vessel. This segmentation allows each component to have optimized functions - the vessels focus on heat treatment, the coupler focuses on stable yet separable coupling, and the engagement protrusions and holes provide reversible mechanical connection. This resolves the contradiction by making the coupling system modular and controllable.
2Productivity
If conveyor rollers are used to convey vessels, then vessels are transported efficiently, but central vessels are delayed due to roller bending
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple heat treatment vessels into a coupled assembly using the coupler. By coupling vessels together, they move as a unified group rather than individually. This merging compensates for the bending of conveyor rollers because the rigid coupler maintains relative positioning between vessels, ensuring that central vessels do not lag behind as they would when conveyed separately on bending rollers.
Data Source
AI summary
A heat treatment vessel coupler for coupling together heat treatment vessels adjacent in a horizontal direction, of a plurality of rectangular box-shaped heat treatment vessels each loaded with a material to be treated, conveyed in a conveying direction on a plurality of rotationally driven conveyor rollers arranged in parallel inside a heat treatment furnace, the coupler comprises a plate body smaller than each of the heat treatment vessels, at least a pair of engagement protrusions each projecting from the plate body and engaging with a corresponding one of side walls of the heat treatment vessels, and a spacer protrusion projecting from the plate body between the at least a pair of engagement protrusions so as to be sandwiched between the heat treatment vessels with which the at least a pair of engagement protrusions engage respectively.