Speeding Up Your Bake with IR
Standard convection ovens are fine, but they have a big flaw: they rely on heating up air. In a high-speed production line, that air becomes a bottleneck. It’s just too slow. To get more parts per minute, we’ve started mixing shortwave infrared (IR) heaters right into the convection stream. Instead of waiting for the air to do the heavy lifting, the IR hits the product surface directly. It’s a shortcut.
Getting the Heat Where It Matters
With IR lamps, you hit your target surface temperatures in seconds. Not minutes. Seconds. We use high-wattage quartz tubes to put the energy exactly where the crust or coating needs to set. The best part? You don’t need a massive tunnel oven taking up half your factory floor. You can crank up the conveyor belt speed and still get a perfect bake without leaving the core raw.
The Gear
We usually go with halogen-filled quartz tubes. They ramp up way faster than those old-school resistive elements. Depending on your setup and how much room you have in the cabinet, we use R7s or SK15 connectors. This makes maintenance a breeze—you just pop them out and drop new ones in during your downtime. And if your product tends to reflect heat, don’t sweat it. We can add a special coating to the tubes to shift the emission spectrum. That way, the energy actually sinks into the dough instead of just bouncing off.
The Catch
Now, this isn’t magic. There are things to watch out for. When you cram more wattage into a smaller space, your oven chassis is going to feel it. You’ve got to make sure your exhaust fans and cooling systems can handle the extra heat, otherwise, you’re looking at fried control electronics. You’ll also need to spend some time on the PID tuning. If you’re not precise, you’ll end up with a burnt exterior and a center that’s still doughy. It takes a bit of tweaking, but once it’s dialed in, it’s a beast.