Industrial engineering group Fives has released an Industry 4.0 product for the forging and heat treatment markets. The North American CertiFire is an IIoT device for automatic combustion system tuning. In practice, it provides automatic regulated and uniform combustion heat for forge and heat treatment furnaces for challenging use cases. The benefit is to ensure reduction in heating time, greater quality of product, and reduced use of energy.

A 200 year old company with a turnover of €1.6 billion, Fives manufactures capital equipment and production lines for manufacturing sectors such as steel, aluminium, forge, heat treat, aerospace and manufacturing industries, like cement, energy, logistics and glass.

The auxiliary hardware device is designed to tune a furnace combustion system quicker and to tighter tolerances, streamlining temperature uniformity surveying and certification. Preconfigured for each system, the technology is plug-and-play compatible with most industrial control equipment.

According to Fives, the tuning accuracy of the North American CertiFire surpasses manual tuning, with the ability to tune a Class IV (±20°F) furnace beyond the temperature uniformity of Class I (±5°F). 

“We expected automation to help us tune faster than by hand,” said Justin Dzik, Manager of Business Development at Fives North American Combustion, “but after testing we were able to see just how big of an impact this technology will have on the industry.” Through data processing and real-time analytics, the CertiFire gives insight into degradation, expected maintenance, predicted failures and a smarter recertification window.