TRW Automotive

Pladrest were asked by TRW Automotive at Peterlee to develop a series of batch ovens for heat treatment of air bag inflators. The development team was comprised of TRW Automotive project and systems engineers, Pladrest design team and Pladrest’s nominated control systems engineers. The team worked to establish a ‘cell’ design which included four identical ovens run from a common plc based control panel.

Critical to the process was product traceability which was achieved through a bar code scanner system on the main control panel and at each oven. The system allowed full integration to the customer’s internal computer systems via a pc linked to the oven control plc.

Features included high accuracy temperature control to ensure components all reached the required temperature within a certain time dwell and did not go over temperature and full component traceability. The ovens were of robust design to withstand accidental inflator deployment inside the oven, and in the event of deployment the ovens were to continue the cycle uninterrupted.

Extensive trials were carried out at our works with the customer present to ensure the optimum oven settings were achieved prior to installation of the equipment.

Heat treatment ovens