Work project related with heat threated material

[ms_stoev]

Hello everyone,

I want to pick the best material according price and efficiency for my work project and I need your help. The material should be resistant to heat, because it should go under conveyor shrinking machine that is set to 600 degrees centigrade and have distance between two heat resistors 10 cm.The plate that I made will go on this conveyer and will have this distance from top and bottom heaters. The total shrinkage time is about 20 seconds.
The dimensions for the plate are: 150mm[L] x 120mm[W] x 18mm[H/T]

Here are some pictures of the device:
1) The holes are mentioned to put material for shrinkage. Loading place is movable, unlike on my drawing... also the holes are squared pipes(10pcs.) of aluminum. There will be a hook handle in the end of it - for additional safety for the workers.

5715416D-top.jpg

2)Red area is where heating is applied to the plate during its transportation on the conveyer machine.

5715418i-bottom.jpg

The material for this plate should be also safe for the environment and for the operator that have to work with it.
So far i've made a prototype with alluminium and the results are not so bad.
The final products are great /the plate is in acceptable condition and the product is clean and shrinked/.
Only problem is cooling down time(for the plate).
So far with small coolers i've managed to cool it down to normal temperature for 2-5 mins. (depends on the cooling device, power and distance). I've searched in the web for thermal characteristics on the alluminium in similar environment like mine's but i didn't find such. My concern is how to cool down the material as fast as possible and is this thermal shock will affect the material structure somehow in time.

After one cycle the plate is heated to about 40-55 degrees(estimate by touch) - it is not that heated, but the material isn't cooling down as fast as i want...
If we produce more plates, they can stay untill cool down and be used again later, but this is not up to me, my bosses will tell how much they can spent for such devices.

Any ideas or recommendations?

[zeke]

Why not plunge it in a water bath? At 55 degrees no problem.

[ms_stoev]

I'll tell you why i think it is not appropriate. Imagine this in mass production doing by one person... you have two additional actions - for plunge and for take it out to dry.
It is also an option, but the idea is to make it more simple without overload the operator for doing his main tasks.

.... In meantime, while writing this post..... i've came up with an idea!!!
Why not to cool it down with AIR! We have very close to the machine air pistol, which is ideal for this kind of job!
It is simple to use, and it doesn't take too much time as task.
I'll try this tomorrow at work!!! Thank you for the push "zeke".

Meanwhile if you have other ideas i am open to hear it.
Thank you in advance.