We Have Compressed Air But Do Not Know Where It Goes…

May 21, 2009 — ndraker

Do you have what you would consider a reasonable amount of air compressor capacity in your facility, but no matter what you do, it seems there are times of the day that you simply cannot keep up with demand and don’t know where the demand is coming from?

I was recently fortunate enough to visit a large paper mill who had this exact problem. It never failed, they would have a large draw on the compressor system that would drop the overall system pressure below a critical point for some machines within the plant. Once below, those machines would shut down and then the maintenance staff have to scramble to figure out the problem. Needless to say, they did not get any help from production workers from other departments to assist them in understanding the nature of the compressed air problem so they could head off future incidents.

On the day of our visit, I introduced the Digital Flow Meter from our Optimization product line. At that point, this issue with the system collapsing due to low compressed air pressure came to mind for the engineering staff. They came up with the plan to install a Digital Flow Meter at various strategic locations within the facility to monitor flow going to each department within the whole process.

In this way, they are able to break the whole compressed air system down into more manageable sized sectors that can be monitored for compressed air usage. They are also planning to use data loggers at each location to catch the culprit of the large air demand so that sufficient measures can be put into place to keep the low pressure condition from causing further down time. In this way, the engineering department can check the flow meters to see where the demand is coming from and do not need to enlist the help of uncooperative production workers.

This customer also apparently has an internal accounting system in which they assign energy use costing to each department. By monitoring the compressed air use for each department, the customer now has a reasonable and accurate method by which they can assign their costs associated with compressed air production across each department.

The next step in their process would be to look at individual applications within each sector to determine if further air savings could be had by applying engineered nozzles, etc.

Thought this scenario would be repeated many times over out there in the land of manufacturing. If you find yourself in the same situation, perhaps now you have a tool to help you out. Our stock flow meters are available for 1 NPT and 2 NPT pipe sizes. Sizes 1/2 NPT through 6 NPT are also available by order.

Neal Raker
Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com

Posted in Compressed Air Optimization. Leave a Comment »

Line Vac Removes Plastic Trim Scrap

May 20, 2009 — esmortimer

Most often, the material conveyed by our Line Vacs is made up of many small, individual pieces of material, such as granules, capsules, etc.  However, it is also possible to convey a continuous single piece of material as well.  The primary application of this sort is trim scrap removal.

I spoke to a customer last week looking to do exactly this.  His company manufactures various types of plastic fabrics.  The particular machine in question was moving a web of non-woven polypropylene fabric.  The web is being cut to a specific width, by trimming off both edges, to make a clean cut line on both sides.

Because the web is not always at a consistent width to start, the trimmed pieces can range anywhere from 0.5″ to 3″ wide.  But, the material is very lightweight and flexible.  So, an oversized Line Vac was not necessary.  I recommended to him to use a 2.5″ unit.  The suction of the unit will be enough to easily collapse the wider pieces and carry them through without clogging.  It will also have plenty of vacuum to keep up with the travel rate of the moving web. 

Using the Line Vac will prevent a mess of scrap fabric from collecting on the machine, and will keep the scraps from interfering with the cutting operation and potentially creating a flawed cut line.  It will also convey the scrap to a collection box near the machine for easy disposal at a later time.

Emily Mortimer
Application Engineer
emilymortimer@exair.com

Posted in Line Vac. Leave a Comment »

Super Air Knife Separates Recycled Material

May 19, 2009 — kaedwards

Our Super Air Knife has been used in applications across various industries, from medical manufacturing to foundries, clean rooms to garbage processing. This example in the recycling industry highlights many of the Super Air Knife’s advantages.

A recycled material customer initially needs to separate the light stuff from the heavy stuff. They have chosen an EXAIR Super Air Knife to do this. The concentrated stream of air can remove the lighter shredded paper and plastics from the heavier materials like cans and bottles.

The Super Air Knife was mounted across the conveyor to blow upward at one of the head pulleys. The small footprint of the air knife is only 1.44″ x 1.75″ in profile, one advantage which does not interfere with the material stream.

The ability to install a pressure regulator and adjust the force of the air flow is another major advantage which allowed the customer to fine tune the force to a level which removes only the material they need at this point in the process.

And for what it is worth, this customer was looking for a solution quickly, we were able to send out two pieces of our 54″ Super Air Knife to a drop ship location the same day we received the Purchase Order.

Kirk Edwards
Application Engineer
kirkedwards@exair.com

Posted in Air Knife. Leave a Comment »

Proof That EXAIR Air Nozzles Entrain Air

May 18, 2009 — japanfalone

 A customer is extruding stringy sticky strands. The problem they were having is that the strands would not flow from the extruder down the chute onto a conveyor. They installed EXAIR Super Air Nozzles to help them along the way. This is a simple straight forward application and should have worked but it didn’t.

 They forwarded me some pictures along with some videos. It was obvious to me why they were not successful. The had installed the nozzle inside a pipe and dead ended it with a pipe cap.

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 The design of the nozzle is to entrain ambient air for efficiency.

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What was happening is that the nozzle was creating a vacuum inside the closed pipe and drawing in the sticky material. The cavity filled up and blocked the flow from the nozzle.

The customer drilled large vent holes all around the perimeter of the pipe cap to allow air to vent in and the problem was solved.

They were quite surprised at the volume of air these nozzles sucked in. It was visual proof that they needed to replace all open pipe and conventional nozzles in their facility to reduce their compressed air consumption.

Joe Panfalone
Application Engineer
joepanfalone@exair.com

Posted in Super Air Nozzle. Leave a Comment »
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