Roller Hearth Furnaces are versatile, efficient and mostly used for index moving of work load baskets. They can also be set up in an oscillating configuration for long heating cycles on very long stock such as pipe, tubing, strip, and slabs. The roller hearth can also handle heavy loads in high volumes because the rolls enable smooth movement of individual carriers, unlike pusher furnaces which rely on forcing a long line of base trays against each other to achieve movement of the product.

This style of furnace can be continuous or indexing on a fixed interval or can operated via forward/reverse oscillation-in-place to accomplish a particular time-temperature cycle. If sufficient floor space is available, a roller hearth furnace can accomplish a multi-step process such as heating, soaking, and cooling steps, moving the product in a continuous manner. Using an indexing movement, the footprint can be much smaller because the hearth advances one basket at a time through the steps.

In the oscillate-in-place type, a long load is moved into the furnace chamber, its doors closed, then the system oscillates to keep the rollers from sagging and when the time-temperature cycle has been completed, the load is quickly powered out of the furnace chamber.