The walking beam furnace can be designed to receive cold product from the slab yard or hot product from the caster. The walking beam furnace is designed to efficiently heat the incoming material to rolling temperatures with satisfactory temperature uniformity for further processing.

The furnace size is determined by several factors material size, material grade, required heating time and production requirements. Modern furnaces are designed to be fuel efficient and to produce low emissions.

The product is moved through the furnace via a series of walking cycles lift, traverse, lower and return. This motion can be accomplished in several ways utilizing hydraulic or electro-mechanical power. The length of the traverse stroke and the cycle times are determined by the product size and the production requirements.

State-of-the-art furnaces include sophisticated computer control including product tracking, delay management strategies and level 2 thermal modeling.