furnace

n. apparatus which generates heat (for heating homes, melting metals, etc.)

A furnace is a device used for heating.In American English, the term furnace on its own is generally used to describe household heating systems based on a central furnace (known either as a boiler or a heater in British English), and sometimes as a synonym for kiln, a device used to fire clay to produce ceramics. In British English the term furnace is used exclusively to mean industrial furnaces which are used for many things, such as the extraction of metal from ore (smelting) or in oil refineries and other chemical plants, for example as the heat source for fractional distillation columns. The term furnace can also refer to a direct fired heater, used in boiler applications in chemical industries or for providing heat to chemical reactions for processes like cracking, and is part of the standard English names for many metallurgical furnaces worldwide.
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Noun
1. an enclosed chamber in which heat is produced to heat buildings, destroy refuse, smelt or refine ores, etc.
(hypernym) chamber
(hyponym) athanor
(part-meronym) grate, grating

(n.)
To throw out, or exhale, as from a furnace; also, to put into a furnace.
  

(n.)
An inclosed place in which heat is produced by the combustion of fuel, as for reducing ores or melting metals, for warming a house, for baking pottery, etc.; as, an iron furnace; a hot-air furnace; a glass furnace; a boiler furnace, etc.
  

(n.)
A place or time of punishment, affiction, or great trial; severe experience or discipline.
  

a type of semiconductor manufacturing equipment used to heat up groups of wafers to temperatures >200oC and <1,300oC, with precise temperature control. Furnaces have quartz tubes sufficiently large to hold a wafer boat and the tube is surrounded by resistance heating elements. The quartz tube has one end connected to a gas controller that allows various gases to flow through the tube, the furnace would also commonly have the ability to change temperatures in a controlled manner and insert and withdraw the wafer boat all under computer control. Computer programs may then insert the wafer boat into a controlled atmosphere, increase the temperature, make changes in the gases flowing and then reduce the temperature and withdraw the wafer boat to accomplish oxidation, diffusion, alloying or annealing. Standard furnace typically ramp-up at 5-10oC/min. and ramp-down at 2-3oC/min.