Are you in the pharmaceutical industry? Have you ever had this problem?

February 26, 2010 — ndraker

In the pharmaceutical industry it would seem that a lot of time and energy is spent on packaging and re-packaging tablets, gels, capsules and other forms of medication. One example that I just became aware of was the need to empty individual container bottles so that the product could be re-packaged due to a mis-print on label applied to the bottle.

In this scenario, the customer has to empty the bottles and get the product back into their packaging machine hopper. Besides being a real pain to have to open each bottle and empty, the customer also has to get these tablets back up into the packaging machine. The tool they decided to use was our 1-1/4″ 316 Stainless Steel Line Vac. The Line Vac had to be made of 316 stainless in order to be considered a normally accepted material for use in applications dealing with medications. The FDA regulates this.

The facts that the 316 stainless Line Vac was a normally stocked item for us and also that it was meant exactly for this type of “bucket and ladder” type conveying application made it a perfect fit for this particular application.

If you are in the pharmaceutical packaging business and can recall where you may have had similar applications for packaging, let us know.

Neal Raker
Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com

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Pneumatic Cylinder Blow Off

February 24, 2010 — kaedwards

We have a customer who manufactures pneumatic and hydraulic cylinders. The cylinders, of course, are round with some kind of machined end which has threaded holes and/or mounting features.

The manufacturer assembles and machines the parts and then runs them through a mineral spirits bath to remove any cutting fluids and oil.

Now they need to remove the mineral spirits from the cylinder to prepare it for a label. They currently do it by hand with an air gun. The air gun generally move the mineral spirits around the cylinder until it evaporates. The coverage area of the air gun they use is small and it takes too much time to remove the mineral spirits. They were trying to reduce the time necessary to remove the mineral spirits.

After consulting with the customer, EXAIR recommended a 3″ Air Wipe, which covers the product range diameters from 1″-2-1/2″ diameters. The operator is still picking up the cylinders but then simply running them through the Air Wipe which provides a one time 360 degree blow off.

I did also recommend some strategically positioned air nozzles to remove liquid from the holes and mounting features because the Air Wipe will not reach those areas on its own, but the customers needs were only to prepare the cylinder surface for a label.

The reduction in blow off time allows the operator to do additional tasks. Additional tasks which have become necessary to remain competitive today.

Kirk Edwards
Application Engineer
kirkedwards@exair.com

Posted in Air Wipe. Tags: , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Out With the Old and In With the New

February 22, 2010 — japanfalone

Oh really!!  Being in my senior years I’ve been around long enough to see things come full circle. What is being touted today as new is merely something recycled from the past with a new coat of paint.  I have a closet full of ties: wide ones, thin ones, stripped ones, paisley prints, stripes, and colors of all sorts. I don’t throw them away because over time they come back into style.

When we were kids, Mom reused jelly jars for juice glasses. Grandma recycled flour sacks into pillow cases. Anything headed for the dump Dad stripped of its nuts and bolts and saved them in recycled baby food jars. As we outgrew our clothes, we recycled them down to our smaller siblings.

Then there came the era of “planned obsolescence“.  The idea was not to make products designed to last, but they should be made cheaply and simply discarded and replaced. This would create jobs and stimulate a robust economy. So we became a wasteful, consuming, throwaway society.

Today we have come full circle. Catch phrases such as sustainability, recycle, and conserve are the rage. Oh really! That’s what we used to do. So is this really new or simply recycled from the past with a new coat of paint?

EXAIR does not subscribe to planned obsolescence. For 27 years we have built our products to last and back it up with a 5 year built to last warranty. Nozzles, jets, and air knives have been around forever. So their basic concept is not new. What is new is what EXAIR has done to design them to conserve compressed air, operate at low sound levels, and be compliant to OSHA directives without sacrificing performance.

If you need help in retrofitting your inefficient nozzles or have an application that requires the use of compressed air call one of our application engineers at 1-800-903-9247

Joe Panfalone
Application Engineer
joepanfalone@exair.com

Posted in Air Amplifier, Air Knife, Air Wipe, Cabinet Cooler, Compressed Air Optimization, Industrial Housekeeping, Industrial Safety Air Guns, Line Vac, Static Elimination, Super Air Nozzle, Vacuum Generators, Vortex Tubes. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

Ionizer to blow debris out of deep pockets on thermoforming application

February 19, 2010 — ndraker

Thermoformed parts are an all too familiar sight in industry. They are used for everything from making the inside shells of refrigerators and dishwashers to in process fixtures to transport delicate items such as flat screen TV’s.  We had one customer who had a thermoformed part that had a particularly deep draw of about 16″ by about 6″ square. He was having a lot of trouble with the debris from a router application getting down into these pockets and creating problem for his parts nesting properly within one another. It also left a trail of debris everywhere these parts went.

So, to clean up his process, the customer ordered an ion air gun for his operator to blow the parts down prior to stacking which eliminated the static and debris issues they had with the finished product.

We are in the middle of static season right now, so if you find yourself in a low humidity room dealing with insulating materials and cannot seem to keep debris from clinging to your parts, or you are receiving the dreaded static discharge, think about having an active static eliminator (ionizer) in hand to take care of the problem. I used to work in plastic injection molding industry and wish I had known about ionizers much sooner than now.

Neal Raker
Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com

Posted in Static Elimination. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »
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