Baking Oven
Baking ovens are ovens that are designed specifically for industrial and commercial baking. Industrial ovens of any kind fall under the blanket designation of thermal processing machinery. Within the context of industrial baking ovens, demand is spread across several distinct markets. The food service industry, which includes restaurants and catering companies, is a large source of demand for baking ovens.
Quick links to Baking Oven Information
Advantages of Baking Ovens
Baking ovens are an integral part of industrial applications. They combine curing and drying ovens under industrial use to provide a dry heating environment. Baking ovens are counted as one of the most widely used pieces of equipment when it comes to drying or curing products. For example, baking ovens may be used to cure paint on parts after being manufactured.
Parts are painted, and then put into the baking oven. From here the oven starts to do its job. Baking ovens work by removing moisture from the air to aid in the curing process. When they suck the moisture out of the paint, it leaves a nice dry finish. The air is rotated within the heating chamber using fans to aid in the drying. One of the perks about using an oven instead of just letting paint dry in the open is that it speeds up the process. Speeding up the drying process enables businesses to get more accomplished; more parts finished equals more revenue for the company. Another advantage to utilizing a baking oven is that the parts will be left to dry within a contained environment. This means that no dust or other random particles will be able to adhere to the paint. On a properly constructed oven the heat will be evenly distributed and provide uniform heating in order to ensure a flawless finish on the newly painted parts.
After all of this the parts are done ready to be assembled or packaged. Having the paint dry in open air may have allowed for dust or debris to settle in the tacky paint as it dried, thereby ruining the coat. It also would have taken substantially longer for the parts to dry in open air. Baking ovens eliminates these issues and more.
Baking Oven Types
The food supply industry makes use of large-scale, industrial baking ovens; some packaged food producers, for example, provide pre-baked or otherwise pre-cooked foods for consumer purchase. Both industries face the challenge of finding ovens of sufficient size, energy-efficiency and means of heat generation when making purchasing decisions. Batch ovens, which allow for the baking of large quantities of food, are often the solution food service professionals will choose when addressing that challenge. Conveyor ovens, which heat products that are passed on a conveyor through a heating chamber, are useful in large-scale baking operations. Other industries with no connection to the food service industry make use of ovens on a scale large enough to merit the use of industrial baking ovens. Art studios and university art programs make use of kilns, which are ovens used to harden sculpted clay projects.
Producing ovens that meet the needs of large-scale baking operations has presented oven manufacturers with some challenges. Conventional natural convection ovens, which heat the air in the confined space of the oven by means of either electric coils or burning natural gas, are often suitable for small-scale baking projects; they are most popular as a solution for consumer baking needs. However, natural convection ovens are often insufficient even for large baking projects in a consumer context. The air circulation within a natural convection oven is very minimal, so if, for example, three sheets of baking materials are placed above each other, and the radiating coils are above or beneath them, the middle sheet will bake more slowly. On an industrial or commercial scale, this deficiency could cripple productivity or result in damaged products. In response to this challenge and others like it, products like forced convection ovens, which use a fan to circulate hot air evenly throughout the oven, have made the process of baking on a substantial scale easier. Infrared ovens also offer improved baking evenness and efficiency by transferring heat directly to the product.