Solving the “Cold Spot” Problem in Long Glass Tunnel Kilns
Most infrared lamps are short—usually just a few hundred millimeters. But if you’re running a long-form glass tunnel kiln, that’s a problem. You need a wall of heat. If you have gaps in your coverage over a 2-meter stretch, you get cold spots. And cold spots mean internal stress, which means your glass cracks. It’s a nightmare. We fix this by building custom, continuous infrared heating units that actually cover the distance. The struggle with power and length You can’t just stretch a quartz tube and call it a day. If you do, you run into voltage drop. Here’s the thing: if the power isn’t perfectly balanced, the heat density fluctuates. You’ll end up with thermal gradients, and your glass will fail. To stop that from happening, we obsess over the wattage and voltage. We make sure the heat stays flat from one end to the other. Plus, we design these to be wired in continuous arrays. You can basically scale the heating zone to fit your kiln’s exact footprint. Keeping the quartz from sagging We use high-purity quartz because it can take the thermal shock. But when a lamp gets this long, physics starts to work against you. These tubes can get fragile. If they aren’t supported right, they’ll sag under their own weight the moment they hit operating temperature. We’ve reinforced the mounting points to keep everything straight and steady. The result? A direct, short-wave hit of radiation that sinks into the glass fast. A few things to watch out for These units put out a massive amount of heat. It’s powerful stuff. Because of that, you have to check your ventilation. If your cooling systems aren’t up to the task, the ambient heat will build up around the housings and fry your wiring. To avoid that, we give you very specific spacing requirements for the layout. It stops the heat from “stacking” in one spot. That way, your glass hits the annealing point perfectly without any risky hotspots.