The aim of the rese­arch pro­ject as a coope­ra­ti­on pro­ject of the com­pa­nies Ther­mo-Star GmbH, Aache­ner Quarz­glas-Tech­no­lo­gie Hein­rich (QGH) and the Depart­ment for Indus­tri­al Fur­naces and Heat Engi­nee­ring of RWTH Aachen Uni­ver­si­ty (IOB) is the deve­lo­p­ment of a novel fle­xi­ble, hydro­gen-hea­ted anne­al­ing fur­nace for glass com­pon­ents and a con­nec­ted hot pro­ces­sing unit for thick-wal­led quartz glass com­pon­ents. The inno­va­ti­ve anne­al­ing fur­nace aims at a more ener­gy-effi­ci­ent heat tre­at­ment of glass com­pon­ents by a fle­xi­ble adapt­a­ti­on of the inner fur­nace geometry.

To imple­ment the inno­va­ti­ve tem­pe­ring fur­nace, a fle­xi­ble, inner fur­nace design and a hydro­gen hea­ting tech­no­lo­gy are being deve­lo­ped. This essen­ti­al­ly requi­res the deve­lo­p­ment and design of the neces­sa­ry engi­nee­ring and safe­ty tech­no­lo­gy. In par­ti­cu­lar, the high fla­me tem­pe­ra­tu­re of hydro­gen during com­bus­ti­on with air must also be taken into account, which requi­res spe­cial design and/or con­trol solu­ti­ons in order to achie­ve a high tem­pe­ra­tu­re uni­for­mi­ty within the fur­nace and to avo­id local over­hea­ting of the heat-trea­ted glass com­pon­ents. In addi­ti­on, a hot pro­ces­sing unit will be deve­lo­ped and instal­led in the area of the tem­pe­ring fur­nace, with which the post-pro­ces­sing steps can be car­ri­ed out more time-effi­ci­ent­ly and thus more economically.

Important pro­duct examp­les are sam­ple hol­ders for the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try. This is a pro­duct with a high reject rate that can curr­ent­ly only be pro­du­ced in small quan­ti­ties becau­se the cur­rent pro­ces­sing steps invol­ve a long wai­ting time. With the new pro­cess and fur­nace, much lar­ger quan­ti­ties can be pro­du­ced becau­se the wai­ting times are signi­fi­cant­ly redu­ced and thus more good parts can be pro­du­ced in the same time. The­se pro­ducts are nee­ded, for exam­p­le, for 5G deve­lo­p­ment and in medi­cal tech­no­lo­gy (e.g. com­pon­ents for arti­fi­ci­al hearts or dia­ly­sis machi­nes), whe­re high mate­ri­al stan­dards must be met in terms of bubbles deve­lo­p­ment, sur­face qua­li­ty and geometry.