The Headache of Cold Spots (And How We Fix Them with Ultra-Long IR Units)
Most infrared lamps stop at about a meter. That’s fine for small jobs, but if you’re running a long glass tunnel kiln, it’s a nightmare. Why? Because every time one lamp ends and another begins, you get a “cold spot.” In the glass world, a cold spot is a disaster. It ruins the consistency of the seal. To stop that from happening, we build custom heating units that stretch well beyond 2 meters. It’s not just about making a longer tube. You can’t just stretch the quartz and call it a day. If you do, the filament starts to sag or, worse, it just burns out at the ends. We spend a lot of time tweaking the voltage and wattage to make sure the heat stays even from the first inch to the last. Plus, you have to watch the tube diameter. If you cram too much wattage into a tube that’s too thin, you’ll overheat the quartz envelope. And you’ll definitely want to double-check your power supply. A 2-meter+ array pulls a lot of amperage; you don’t want to be the person who trips the breaker in the middle of a run. Getting the layout right We use high-purity quartz because the thermal stress on these things is intense. The goal is a continuous line of heat. No gaps. No breaks. We also obsess over the mounting brackets and connectors. If they aren’t designed right, they act like heat sinks—literally sucking the energy away from the glass tube you’re trying to seal. That defeats the whole purpose. The trade-offs (Because nothing is perfect) Here is the upside: fewer lamps mean fewer electrical connections. Fewer wires mean fewer points of failure at the terminals. It’s a cleaner setup. But there’s a catch. A 2-meter quartz tube is incredibly fragile. One clumsy move during installation and snap—there goes your afternoon. You absolutely need precision jigs to mount these safely. One last thing: these arrays put out a massive amount of heat. If your kiln’s exhaust system isn’t sized correctly, that heat has nowhere to go, and you’ll end up warping the outer housing. It’s a powerful setup, but you’ve got to respect the hardware.