Buying a Heat Treat Oven for our Machine Shop
We needed a small, inexpensive heat treat oven to heat treat steel parts. Being able to harden tool steels like o1, A2, and D2 is very helpful to be able to do in the home shop!
We didn't want to spend a lot of money on the heat treat oven, but we wanted one with a digital control to set the temperature and soak times. We heard good things about the Rapidfire Pro Kiln from TableTop Furnace and bought one off Amazon for fairly cheap: about $550!
It's been great having in the shop. It uses 110V AC, so we can plug it into any outlet in the garage or home shop. The build quality is top-notch and it heats up quickly. We have used it on small job shop work, making custom tools and testing our hand at heat treating. A friend even used it to heat treat his knife blade!
The only thing we don't like: the PID temperature control is a bit tricky to program. Here's a link to the PDF manual in case you lose yours or forget how to program!
