Line Vac Improves Work Conditions

September 22, 2009 — Kirk Edwards

So imagine the guy who cleans up bulk material load spills from underneath rail cars. Sounds fun eh? It seems difficult and back breaking, but our Line Vac improved the process.

A logistics company who handles bulk material load transfers from rail to truck is unloading roofing granules; those tiny little pebbles which coat your shingles. They move the granules from the rail cars into a truck. The granules are poured out of hoppers from the bottom of the rail cars. During this process some of the granules get dumped in between the rail road tracks and around the track area.

Once they clean up the granules it is fairly simple.  The location is remote, so they simply wheelbarrow the granules up to the nearby dirt road and grade them into the road. But getting the granules from under the rail car into the wheel barrow requires a person to go under the car and scoop out the granules with a shovel.

Fortunately the employees’ boss had concerns about safety and injuries from moving around a lot in a little space. EXAIR provided a 2″ Heavy Duty Line Vac along with a suction hose to remove the granules. It has eliminated the need to go all the way under the rail car. And it is moving the granules 150′, all the way up to the road area where they can be spread out on the road.

Kirk Edwards
Application Engineer
kirkedwards@exair.com

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Lucky Potato Chips

September 21, 2009 — japanfalone

A snack food company contacted me for a way to separate out potato chips that were stuck together. These are considered process rejects.  But as kids these were prized as “Lucky Chips”. We would search for them as you would four-leaf clovers.

What I suggested to this customer was to split the conveyor leaving a space between the two parts and with the first conveyor standing higher than the second. Then underneath the higher conveyor, we mounted a model 110024 Super Air Knife blowing horizontally and through the stream of chips falling down onto the second conveyor.

The single chips being lighter blew over onto the second conveyor. The “Lucky Chips” being heavier did not quite make it across and fell through the space between the conveyors.

I was going to ask to get a bag of their rejects to take back to my next family reunion and make my siblings envious. But we are grown up now and it would not have the same significance as it did back then.

Joe Panfalone
Application Engineer
joepanfalone@exair.com

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Line Vac Used For Ball Retrieval in Amusement Park Shooting Game

September 18, 2009 — ndraker

This application comes to us courtesy of another of our International distributors. An Amusement Park  has as one of its attractions a ride/game where the riders get into a “car” and shoot small, yellow balls at a large wall made to look like swiss cheese. The holes are of 3 different sizes and the point value increases as the holes get smaller in diameter. Each car is equipped with a firing cannon to launch the balls at the wall. Once the balls make their trip to the bottom of the wall of cheese, they are collected from a central location and must be transported back to a hopper for replenishing the cannons on each individual car. Model 6084 2″ Aluminum Line Vac was selected to transport the balls back up into the main feed hopper. A wand and length of hose are used to suck the balls up to the hopper by ride personnel.

Neal Raker
Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com

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Hold Vacuum on Steel Mold Cavity

September 17, 2009 — esmortimer

Plastic injection molding can sometimes be a tricky process to get exactly right, especially when some of the mold cavities are quite small.  Without special care, the molten plastic does not always make it all the way down into those small nooks and crannies of the mold. 

A plastic injection molding company contacted me last week with an application just like this.  He was looking for a way to pull a vacuum on a 1-2 cubic inch cavity in a steel mold.  Steel is essentially a non-porous material, so one of our High Vacuum In-Line E-Vac Vacuum Generators would be in order.  Because of the small size of the cavity, the smallest one, model 810002, would be more than sufficient for the job.  But, the inlet pressure of this unit can be adjusted to both minimize air consumption, and reduce the vacuum level down to a level that still meets the requirements without being overkill.

Installation of this unit will lead to fewer rejected plastic parts due to improper mold filling.

Emily Mortimer
Application Engineer
emilymortimer@exair.com

Posted in Vacuum Generators. Leave a Comment »
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