Inline dryers are available as a standard offering of BTU’s custom furnaces group. The dryers can be configured with radiant heaters (ceramic fully-enclosed-coil, FEC), convection plenums or a combination thereof. The convection dryers are produced as stand-alone equipment, but can also be integrated with a BTU Controlled Atmosphere Furnace or Fast Fire to provide pre-heating or binder burn-out. Typical applications for convection dryers include epoxy curing, polymer thick-film curing, and low-temp ceramic drying. Drying and curing processes are typically at 200°C or below and in air atmosphere. Higher process temperatures, and other process atmospheres, are available with BTU’s Fast Fire or Controlled Atmosphere Furnaces.
All of BTU’s inline dryers include top/bottom heating configurations as well as a range of cooling options, including, no cooling, controlled water cooling, or controlled convection cooling. The dryers feature thermal insulation optimized for both process control and energy savings. Optional condensate entrapment is also available for binder burn-out applications.
Using an inline dryer versus a batch dryer is compelling for a number of reasons including superior process repeatability, increased throughput, and reduced cycle time.
CONVECTION DRYERS – CUSTOM CONFIGURED – HIGH RELIABILITY
The foundation of the Convection Dryer is the same convection plenum that is used in our industry-leading reflow ovens. The advantage is that a custom layout can be configured while retaining the reliability of a volume product. We’ve shipped thousands of reflow ovens with numerous plenums (top/bottom) per each resulting in hundreds of thousands of plenums operating 24/7 with BTU’s lifetime heater/blower warranty – a statistic few custom-configured products can boast.
The BTU convection dryer can be configured for very wide widths up to 48″ and very long heated sections. The convection plenums can be configured with closed-loop convection control allowing for maximum process control. The closed-loop configuration can have each plenum controlled individually or group process sections together for ease of use and cost-savings, even in custom furnaces.
