Low mass plates, beams, posts, setters, saggers and pusher plates, engineered around the ware you fire.
Every pound of kiln furniture is heated and cooled with your product.
Less of it means more ware per cycle.
In industrial sintering and firing, kiln furniture lasts longest when its material matches the atmosphere and the cycle: silicon carbide grades such as recrystallized, nitride bonded and reaction bonded carry load at temperature in thin, low mass sections, while ultra high alumina with very little silica holds up in hot, hydrogen rich reducing atmospheres where silica breaks down. Blasch casts both as engineered plates, beams, posts, setters, saggers and pusher plates for continuous and batch furnaces. The shape is designed around your ware, so the furniture carries the load with as little mass as possible.
Many kilns still run on support structures designed when energy was cheap: heavy bricks, blocks and plates that make a strong base and soak up heat every cycle.
Kiln furniture is overhead you fire every cycle, so the lightest structure that safely holds the ware is the one that frees the most capacity.
Oxidizing atmospheres, high load: recrystallized and nitride bonded silicon carbide keep their strength at temperature, so plates and beams can be thin without sagging. Recrystallized silicon carbide
Hydrogen and reducing atmospheres: silica is reduced to volatile silicon monoxide and water in hot hydrogen, and the furniture weakens from inside. Ultra high alumina with minimal silica is made for these furnaces, and magnesia and spinel based grades are under development for basic processes.
Fast heating and cooling: cordierite and mullite take repeated thermal cycling, where a dense part would crack at its thickest section.
Contact with the product: high purity alumina keeps contamination away from powders and parts that react with silicon or iron.
Structural furniture carries the load through the furnace, saggers and setters hold the product itself.
Plates, beams, posts, rollers, pusher plates and muffle liners for continuous pusher and roller hearth furnaces.
Saggers for calcining battery cathode powders, MIM and PM setters, sintering boats and core setters.
Blasch furniture supports products during debinding, sintering, calcining, heat treating and firing in industrial furnaces. Typical loads are:
For battery plants, saggers are one part of a longer chain that also includes the conveying of abrasive cathode powder. Battery materials manufacturing
Blasch does not sell shelves and posts for studio or hobby kilns. The furniture on this page is designed for production furnaces, often for one product and one furnace, and cast in the dimensions that furnace needs.
A setter that cracks after a few cycles usually fails from a temperature difference across its section, not from the load. Blasch engineers analyze these thermal stresses before the part is cast, as published for investment casting core setters. The core setter analysis
Materials with little or no silica, such as ultra high alumina or suitable silicon carbides, because hot hydrogen reduces silica and weakens the part.
Yes. Plates, setters and saggers are engineered around your ware and furnace, with the features cast in, so no grinding is needed.
Both. Pusher plates and rollers suit continuous furnaces, plates, posts and saggers work in batch kilns as well.
Less mass takes less heat to bring to temperature and gives it back faster on cooling, which shortens the cycle. How much depends on the ratio of furniture to ware.
Send the furnace type, the atmosphere, the peak temperature and what you fire. A Blasch engineer proposes the grade and a lighter layout.
