Getting Your Glass Heating Right: The Struggle with Long Tunnel Kilns
If you’re heating glass for molding in a long tunnel kiln, you know the nightmare of the “cold spot.” You need that thermal profile to stay rock-steady across the whole conveyor. But here’s the problem: once you need to cover a span longer than 2 meters, the standard lamps you buy off the shelf just don’t make the cut. That’s where we come in. We build custom, continuous infrared heating units that actually fit your space. The length headache Most IR lamps are just too short. If you try to patch together a bunch of small ones, you end up with “striping”—those frustrating temperature drops in the gaps between lamps. It ruins the soak. To fix this, we customize the quartz envelope and the filament length to match your tunnel’s actual footprint. We lay them out in one continuous run. No gaps. No stripes. Just a smooth, even heat that does the job. Power and the “Heat Soak” Running a heating element over 2 meters puts a massive strain on your power supply. It’s a balancing act. We tweak the voltage and wattage so the filaments don’t just burn out at the ends. Now, you need high wattage to get that glass hot fast, but there’s a catch. These units put out a lot of ambient heat. If your cooling fans and vents aren’t up to the task, you’re looking at warped supporting frames. It’s worth double-checking your airflow before you flip the switch. Keeping things moving Nobody wants to spend their weekend rewiring a kiln. We use industrial-grade connectors and reinforced terminations because factory floors are rough. These things can take a beating. And when a unit finally gives out? You don’t have to tear down the whole array. We designed these as simple drop-in replacements. You swap the old one for a new one and get your line moving again. Simple as that.