The Bogie Hearth Furnace is a batch-type heat treatment furnace with a movable bogie trolley. The trolley carries workpieces in and out of the furnace chamber. It boasts large loading capacity and spacious working chamber, suitable for heavy and large-size workpieces.
A car-bottom furnace — also called a bogie hearth furnace — is a batch-type heat treatment furnace built around a movable trolley instead of a fixed hearth. The chamber, the door and the heating system stay where they are; the floor of the furnace travels. A charge is built up on the trolley, driven into position, treated through heat-up, soak and controlled cooling, and then withdrawn for unloading.
The arrangement exists for the part rather than the furnace. Castings, forged shafts, welded frames, die blocks and heavy machine bases are awkward or unsafe to work through a fixed furnace opening; on this design they are placed where there is floor space to rig them and carried in already assembled, instead of being built up piece by piece inside a chamber.
Because chamber length and width, charge height, door opening and trolley rating all follow the workpiece list, an order starts with drawings rather than a model number. Changxing Jiacheng Furnace has built heat treatment furnaces in Changxing, Zhejiang since 2010, working as an industrial furnace supplier on custom and non-standard equipment rather than a fixed catalogue range.
Safety is the first advantage, and it is usually the first thing a buyer raises. On a fixed-hearth furnace the operator works at an opening — leaning in to set a sling, checking a spacer, judging clearance under a hot roof. Here the same work happens on a trolley standing in open floor, with the chamber empty and the door up, so loading, re-slinging and inspection become ordinary rigging jobs again.
The second advantage is that the door stops being the bottleneck. A box furnace is limited by what will pass through its opening; a bogie hearth furnace is limited by what the trolley and the chamber can hold. Once parts go beyond a certain size it is handling, not heating, that decides which furnace a shop can use.
The third is coverage of a mixed order book. A foundry running heavy castings one week, fabricated frames the next and forged blanks after that does not need a normalizing furnace, a stress relieving furnace and an annealing furnace — it needs one chamber whose trolley can be re-rigged between campaigns, with the cycle set for each job.
The fourth is crane availability. The bay crane is needed to place a piece on the trolley, not to hold it in position over a furnace for the length of a cycle, which returns lifting capacity to the rest of the shop.
Working with an industrial furnace supplier that builds each chamber to order also pays off at the installation stage: the trolley deck, the rail run-out and the door opening are matched to your crane hook height and your bay layout, instead of your bay being rebuilt around a catalogue dimension.
| Furnace | Duty it covers |
| Car-bottom furnace (this model) | Heavy castings heat treatment: normalizing, tempering, annealing and stress relief of heavy and oversized parts |
| Bell-type furnace | Long shafts, bars and tubes that suit vertical loading and take less floor space |
| Double-door box furnace | Smaller castings and machined parts, loaded from either side of the shop |
| Roller hearth intermediate annealing furnace | Continuous intermediate annealing of steel, aluminum and copper tube with low surface marking |
| Aluminum alloy quenching furnace | Solution treatment with fast transfer to the quench tank — the aluminum alloy heat treatment furnace in our range for extrusions, plates, forgings and castings |
| Continuous mesh-belt bright annealing furnace | High-volume bright annealing of tube, strip and sheet under protective atmosphere |
| Continuous quenching and tempering line | Full quench and temper for shafts, bolts and fasteners in one continuous flow |
- Movable bogie trolley — the chamber floor is a rail-mounted trolley driven in and out under power, so the charge is set on the deck outside and no lifting gear ever enters the furnace. - Heavy charge, large working volume — the hearth, trolley frame and rails are built around the weight and footprint you declare, which makes the chamber a function of your parts rather than of a standard shell size. - Sealed lifting door — a power-lifted front door with a sealing structure holds the chamber tight through the cycle, protecting both the heat balance and any atmosphere inside. - High-precision temperature control — a high-precision control system holds the chamber field steady across the working volume, with thermocouple placement, zoning and recording agreed at quotation. - Optional controlled atmosphere — where the surface has to come out clean, an inert gas system can be specified together with the door seal and gas train that support it. - Aluminum duty — at the lower end of its range the chamber works as an aluminum alloy heat treatment furnace for large castings and plate stacks that will not fit a standard unit, with the trolley taking the load in at floor level. - Built as a custom industrial furnace — chamber length and width, charge height, door opening, trolley travel and control configuration are all set from your drawings and your bay layout. - Serviceable from the floor — heaters or burners, thermocouples, door gear and rail alignment are all reachable from the shop floor, which suits equipment that is maintained between campaigns rather than during one.
| Parameter | Detail |
|---|---|
| Furnace type | Batch-type car-bottom (bogie hearth) furnace |
| Build | Custom industrial furnace, sized around your workpiece list |
| Loading | Rail-mounted trolley driven in and out of the chamber |
| Door | Power-lifted front door with sealing structure |
| Processes | Normalizing, tempering, annealing and stress relief — all four run in the same chamber, so a stress relieving furnace is not needed as a second machine |
| Aluminum work | Annealing and stress relief here; solution treatment runs on a separate aluminum solution heat treatment furnace |
| Atmosphere | Optional controlled atmosphere system |
| Temperature control | High-precision control system with a uniform field across the working volume |
| Charge size | Set by the largest and heaviest piece in your programme |
| Site services | Power supply and any gas or atmosphere connections, confirmed against the final layout |
| Records | Drawings, foundation plan, control schematic and test records as agreed in the contract |
Two heating options are quoted for this chamber: electric resistance elements, or a fuel-fired burner system running on the gas available at your plant. The choice is rarely about price alone. Electric heating keeps combustion products out of the chamber, which matters when the optional controlled atmosphere is specified for a clean surface; a fuel-fired chamber is often chosen where gas is the cheaper site fuel or the incoming supply cannot carry the connected electrical load. Because every custom industrial furnace is built around your site, we quote the version that fits rather than the one that is easier to build.
Whichever source is used, the temperature class is set from the highest temperature your cycle calls for, with control range left above it, and the chamber is divided into control zones. Each zone carries its own thermocouple and controller, so the two ends of a long trolley can be trimmed against each other instead of the whole chamber following a single reading. The number of zones follows from chamber length and from the way the charge sits along it — one heavy block standing at the door end loads the chamber very differently from a full deck of smaller parts — and the division is fixed with you at quotation.
Installed power or burner capacity is set by charge weight, chamber volume and the heat-up rate you want to work to. A heavy castings heat treatment cycle that can take its time needs less installed power than one that has to be finished before the next shift; asking for a fast ramp on a large charge and then quoting a small burner is how a furnace ends up unable to hold its own schedule. Send the cycle time you actually run and the number of cycles per week, and the rating follows from those figures.
On the site side we need the supply voltage, frequency and phases, the gas type and pressure where a burner system is chosen, the position of the control cabinet relative to the chamber, and whether the shop works one shift or two. A gas-fired batch-type heat treatment furnace also needs its flue route and combustion safety interlocks agreed against the layout, and an electric unit needs the supply capacity confirmed before the cabinet is built. These are the items that hold up commissioning when they are left until the furnace is already on the floor.
| Document | What it covers | When you receive it |
| Workpiece and process schedule | The part list, material, heaviest single piece, full charge weight and the cycle you need — the basis a custom industrial furnace is sized from | With the quotation |
| General arrangement drawing | Chamber, trolley, lifting door and control cabinet, with the clearance each needs around it for loading and inspection | On order confirmation |
| Foundation and floor loading plan | Plinth position, anchor points, rail run-out and the load the loaded trolley places on the workshop floor | Before civil work starts |
| Rail and run-out layout | Rail gauge, run-out length, end stop position and the floor space needed behind the trolley at its parked position | Before site preparation |
| Electrical and control schematic | Incoming supply, cabinet layout, thermocouple and recorder points, alarm and interlock set | With the machine documents |
| Heat-up and test record | Readings taken during the test run, together with the points you asked to witness before dispatch | Before shipment |
| Operating and maintenance manual | Start-up sequence, cycle setting, door and trolley care, and a fault table for the common alarms | At handover |
| Spare parts list | Recommended holding items, the position each occupies and how it is identified when reordering | At handover |
Send us your drawings, process aim and site conditions; our engineers will compare the furnace types that fit, set the temperature zoning and handling arrangement around your parts, and confirm the layout with you before production begins. Custom work adjusts chamber dimensions and control configuration, while safety circuits and atmosphere safety components stay as designed. After delivery we remain reachable for start-up questions, fault finding and spare parts.
Yes — both names describe the same machine: a fixed chamber with a door at one end and a rail-mounted trolley that carries the charge in and out. Drawings and quotations switch between the two names depending on the supplier, so when you compare offers it is worth checking the trolley rating, the chamber dimensions and the clear door opening rather than the title on the sheet.
It is built to order as a custom industrial furnace. The arrangement is consistent — chamber, trolley, lifting door, control cabinet — but the dimensions come from your parts: chamber length and width from the largest footprint, charge height from the tallest piece including its rigging, door opening from the load cross-section, and trolley travel from how much floor you can give up outside the chamber.
From four figures you already hold: the weight of the heaviest single piece, the total weight of a full charge, the footprint each piece needs on the deck, and the height of the tallest load once it is slung or stacked. We also ask how the charge is spread, because one concentrated block and a scatter of smaller parts load the deck very differently. Both are fixed against those figures at quotation rather than picked from a table.
Yes, but only outside the chamber. The crane lifts each piece onto the trolley while the trolley is standing in the bay; once the charge is complete the trolley drives in under its own power, so no lifting gear goes into the furnace and the crane is free during the cycle. Plan the bay so the crane can reach the trolley at its loading position and still have hook height above the tallest charge.
For annealing and stress relief, yes — aluminum plate, billets and large aluminum castings are run in this chamber, and the trolley makes light work of heavy plate stacks that would be awkward to get through a box furnace door. What it does not do is solution treatment, because that needs a fast transfer from chamber to quench tank.
Yes — the Aluminum Alloy Quenching Furnace. It uses hot-air circulation for a uniform field across the load, a transfer mechanism that moves the charge from chamber to quench tank quickly enough to hold the solution, and a chamber and quench medium sized to your workpieces. It is the aluminum solution heat treatment furnace in our range for extrusions, plates, forgings and castings.
Usually, yes. Annealing and stress relief are slow, forgiving cycles that suit a batch chamber; solution treatment is a race against the clock, because the part has to reach the quench tank while it is still at temperature. A plant doing both normally runs the car-bottom furnace for the anneal and an aluminum alloy heat treatment furnace with a quench system for the solution treatment, and schedules them as two separate operations.
The trolley and rails take most of the attention: keep the rail run clear of scale and debris, check alignment after any heavy impact, and inspect the drive and wheels on a fixed interval. The door seal comes next, since a worn seal shows up as heat loss and, where an atmosphere is used, as gas consumption. Thermocouples should be checked against a reference at planned intervals, and heaters or burners, insulation and the control interlocks inspected between campaigns rather than during one.
