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Lab ovens are essential equipment in a research lab and one of the first items you must acquire when setting up your space. An oven in a laboratory is multifunctional, serving critical purposes for research and development. But not all lab ovens are the same—that is, different ovens have various purposes.

You can benefit from understanding more about lab ovens since they are valuable investments you want to get right. This article will guide you in learning more about lab ovens and their uses.

4 Types of Lab Ovens



You can acquire any of these four types of laboratory ovens for your lab.

1. Vacuum Drying Oven

A vacuum drying oven is ideal if you need an oven for delicate functions such as drying small-scale parts or removing flammable solvents. Vacuum drying ovens can do this because they operate at relatively low temperatures and have an exhaust port that vents moisture away from the substance it's drying within the chamber. 

You'll often see vacuum drying ovens in labs used for research, engineering, and industrial applications. These lab ovens also create a low-pressure area inside the chamber, reducing the temperature of liquid water's boiling point.

2. Forced Air Drying Oven

Forced air ovens and vacuum drying ovens are some of the most common ovens in the industry. 

A forced air drying oven is a lab drying oven that can rapidly heat its chamber, which can help you save time during research. It does so through a blower fan that pushes warm air around the oven chamber. This feature also means that the oven's recovery time—the time it takes to return to its original temperature after opening and closing the door—is low.

3. Gravity Convection Oven

Gravity convection ovens are viable, low-cost alternatives to forced convection ovens that you can select if your budget is limited. Gravity convection ovens are inexpensive because they don't have a blower fan. It relies on convection—the natural rising and falling of hot air—to heat materials.

4. High-Temperature Lab Oven

Should you need an oven that provides intense heating, the high-temperature lab oven is a clear choice. These lab drying ovens can reach more than 500°C. To contextualize that temperature, coming into contact with liquid at 69°C will result in a painful 3rd-degree burn in a single second. 

Every lab oven has its own safety features because researchers use them for many purposes. High-temperature ovens have additional insulation lining the oven walls and doors, ensuring your safety while operating them.

What are lab ovens used for?



Lab oven use cases range from simple to highly complex and scientific. Learn about the different ways you can use a particular lab oven.

1. Annealing

If you need to mold certain materials—such as glass or steel—into different forms, you'll need an oven capable of annealing. The annealing process aims to heat and cool the material to reduce its hardness and increase its elasticity, which is why high-temperature ovens are ideal for this process. Annealing is common in metallurgy, medical device manufacturing, and material science.

2. Baking

When you bake materials for manufacturing or research, you're heating matter while saving the humidity of the substance. This process is a must if you work in industries such as pharmaceutical, manufacturing, or the material sciences, which often use gravity convection ovens for their baking needs.

3. Curing

Curing is a process that involves drying and baking materials to harden their chemical elements, making them stronger and more durable. You'll often find lab ovens used for curing in industries such as polymer research like plastics and rubber, semiconductor, nanotech, epoxies manufacturing, glues, etc.

4. Drying and Food Dehydration

This process involves removing moisture from samples. You'll regularly see practitioners of environmental, biological, or clinical laboratories use ovens for drying and food dehydration; it's a necessary process to dehumidify and preserve certain materials. 

Vacuum and forced air ovens are the standard oven types for drying and food dehydration, capable of carefully removing the moisture and drying the material at a much lower temperature. Additionally, gravity convection ovens can remove the humidity from a sample through a lighter airflow since the delicate particles of a substance in the chamber are likely to shatter.

5. Sintering

Vacuum sintering or "frittage" is the process of welding materials together using intense pressure and heat. Lab ovens diffuse the atoms in material across the particle boundaries, allowing researchers to fuse them into one solid mass without melting it. Sintering is a typical process in manufacturing metals, ceramics, and plastics.

6. Sterilizing

Lab ovens are essential, especially if you're a medical professional or researcher who needs a reliable device for hot air sterilization.

For example, medical professionals use laboratory ovens to sterilize equipment before procedures—forceps, scalpels, scissors—to eliminate possible bacteria and contaminants. The average temperature needed for sterilizing is around 320°F (160°C) at a minimum of 45 minutes. 

High-Quality Ovens for Your Lab


Your laboratory isn't complete without a functioning lab oven. Different types of ovens address various purposes, so choosing the right oven is a decision you should take seriously.

Regardless of which type of oven you select or what you use it for, acquiring one from a reliable lab equipment manufacturer puts you at ease because you know you're getting the highest-grade equipment for your lab.

Across International provides professionals like yourself with furnaces and lab ovens to help you complete your research and processes without a hitch. Browse through our selections of lab ovens to learn more about our offers, or request a quote today to start setting up your lab.