EBNER-Industrieofenbau, founded in 1948, designs and fabricates industrial furnaces for the steel, copper-base metal and aluminium industries. The HICON/H₂® annealing technology developed by EBNER offers significant advantages in the heat treatment of wire rod and drawn wire, combining efficiency, quality and sustainability.

In HICON/H₂® bell annealers, high heat transfer coefficients ensure that the required energy penetrates all the way into the center of even highly compact wire coils. This results in nearly identical temperature profiles in the inner and outer wraps, producing extremely homogeneous mechanical properties. Due to the special design of the workbases and optimized atmosphere flow, temperature differences within a charge stack typically remain below 10 K. High atmosphere circulation rates of up to approx. 50 m³/s further reduce annealing times and improve temperature uniformity.

The use of hydrogen as a process atmosphere, combined with a fully encapsulated processing chamber, supports an extremely pure atmosphere. This improves surface cleanliness, inhibits oxidation and decarburization, and enables drawing compounds to be efficiently removed during recrystallization annealing. Compared with nitrogen atmospheres, hydrogen allows higher throughput while significantly improving wire surface quality.

EBNER’s ATMOSPHEREperfect software module provides fully automatic control of the H₂ purging program. The system dynamically adapts the purge flowrate to the condition of the charge, helping to reproduce premium surface quality while reducing hydrogen and electrical energy consumption by up to 20 %, depending on the facility configuration. In addition, EBNER offers modern heating solutions such as ECOBURN FLEX dual-fuel burner technology for natural gas or hydrogen, as well as electric heating systems for low-emission and decarbonized production processes.

The range of applications of HICON/H₂® bell annealers includes basic, spheroidize and recrystallization anneals for low-carbon and high-carbon steel wire with round, flat or profile cross sections, as well as high-alloy grades such as Cr-steels and NiFe alloys. The technology is also used for recrystallization anneals and tempering processes for copper-base metals and special alloys.

Besides heat treatment equipment, EBNER supplies the necessary electrical and electronic equipment for controlling and visualizing the facility, right up to the process control system, atmosphere systems and charging aids. With more than 4,900 HICON® workbases in service worldwide, including around 500 for wire applications, EBNER underlines its technological leadership in the heat treatment of wire rod and drawn wire.