MaintenanceGuy

To start off let me say that this forge was built in house about 30 years ago by a maintenance guy who was no engineer. He did a great job with what he had to go on. All of the points you made above are exactly what I was hoping to see you address. I have already ordered a control system for the forge that will allow me to consistently and accurately monitor and control temperatures inside as well as add in some much needed safety features. When I rebuilt the forge about 6 months ago I was told the department where it is used was being shut down in 3 months, so I did the work with that in mind. Now they want this to remain a part of the business indefinitely. That being said, I simply lined the inside with fire brick the same way it was done originally, having no knowledge about the proper construction of a forge I used the wrong brick and also severely under- insulated the whole thing. There is no doubt a HUGE amount of conductive heat loss as well as a massive amount of heat and flame visibly exiting the openings of the unit. There is no question in my mind that I need to reline the interior to upgrade the insulation, I guess what I am wondering is, are the products Im seeing mentioned on here durable enough to hold up to a forge regularly run 10hours a day 5 days a week? Typically the number of bars put into the forge to be heated run from 26-60 pcs and we are only trying to heat about 8" of the end of the rod. One guy runs the whole operation and he takes each piece out and runs them through one by one once they are hot. Heat up time is definitely an issue however I don't feel that it takes that long contrary to the operators opinion. I would like to redesign the door however there are times when it is filled almost to capacity of the current opening. Cost is the single biggest determining factor in how I proceed in any modifications to this machine. I really need to figure out a way to use what I already have to increase the throughput of material on this thing and also add in safety features to protect the operator and myself when I'm working on it.

Hello all! Im new to the board here and need some help with questions about the small forging furnace we have here at work. It was built by a previous maintenance supervisor and it works decent but I think I can make it much more efficient and effective. A few months ago I did some work to fix it up a bit and didn't know a darned thing about forges so I made some mistakes. After reading through some threads here you seem like a quite knowledgeable group. Our forge is fed by 4- 100 gallon propane tanks and a blower that I don't know the CFM on. we have 3/4" pipe running 10psi of gas into 1" pipe at the forge. I haven't been able to obtain a true temperature reading as I don't have an instrument capable of reading high enough temps, but we are making 1.25" round A36 bar hot enough to flatten, punch, and bend a tight 180* radius. Here's a couple pictures of what our machine looks like. Thank you in advance for any help!!