EXAIR now offers the new Air Cradle Safety Air Gun Mount, a simple but innovative accessory designed to keep safety air guns and similarly sized tools within easy reach at workstations and machine centers. With… More
What’s So Great About EXAIR’s CAD Library?
I was first introduced to CAD drawings when I was in the Navy. Right out of Nuclear Power School, I reported to a new construction Trident submarine. My first job was taking paper P&ID’s (Piping & Instrumentation Diagrams) to the Engineering room to verify that the valves, flanges, welds, pressure gauges, thermometers, etc. of various reactor and steam plant piping systems were in the right place, correctly labeled or marked, and visually free of defects. They’ve come a LONG way, technologically, since then:
When I left the Navy, I included some vague verbiage about CAD expertise on my resume. That actually got me a pretty cool job with an industrial pump company…making to-scale drawings of pump and drive assemblies, usually mounted on steel baseplates, that showed distances from the pump’s fluid ports to the baseplate mounting holes, so the millwrights & pipe fitters could work together to prepare for installation.
The absolute number one most important resource I had at my disposal was the ability to get to-scale CAD files (.dxf or .dwg) from pump, motor, gearbox, coupling, etc., manufacturers. The first rule of CAD is “never draw anything twice” and I rarely had to draw anything, except for items that we were fabricating ourselves. I had to call some manufacturers; others I could email; some would mail out a 3.5″ floppy disk (I know I’m dating myself with that one) or a CD (before THEY went obsolete) with everything they made on it…and some had drawing files you could download straight from their website. Just like EXAIR does.
Almost all the drawings I made back in the late 20th Century were 2D (front and side views), but nowadays, almost everyone uses solid modeling software (or apps) for drawings. This has the distinct advantage of being able to see the assembly from any angle, so you can tell right away if there’s going to be physical interference between two parts in close proximity to each other. While you can download models in a number of formats from the EXAIR website, .stp files are common to most modeling apps, so they’re the ones that get downloaded most.
If you have questions about EXAIR products — how they work, what they’re made of, which one is best for your application – give me a call. And if you need a drawing, I can help with that too.
Russ Bowman, CCASS
Application Engineer
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Buy 1, Get 40 Free
Buy one, get one free is a phrase many of us are familiar with. Most of the time it is a good thing; we all like free stuff. What would you say to buy one, get 30 free? Or even 40 free? That’s not far off how our Air Knives perform. They entrain large volumes of ambient air, so for every 1 SCFM of compressed air you are paying for, you are getting 30–40 SCFM of additional free ambient entrained air.
So how are our Air Knives able to do this? We explain this phenomenon in more detail in this blog here, but in summary, a Super Air Knife takes advantage of the Venturi Effect. Named after Giovanni Venturi, who found out that when you increase the speed of a fluid through an orifice, the surrounding fluid will move along with it. This creates a region of low pressure, and the faster the speed, the lower the pressure. With low pressure, the air around rushes in to fill that gap and join the airstream. The quantity of ambient air that gets ‘pulled’ into the airstream is entrained air, or free air.
The engineered surface of the Super Air Knife is designed to minimize as much loss in air speed as possible, which maximizes the amount of free air that is being entrained. The ratio between free air and compressed air used is called the amplification ratio. Super Air Knives have an amplification ratio of 40:1, with our Standard Air Knives having an amplification ratio of 30:1. For comparison, a pipe with holes drilled will have an amplification ratio of between 2:1 and 5:1. As you can see, with a Super Air Knife you are getting a much better deal on your compressed air usage.
This additional free air adds more mass, which allows the Super Air Knife to do more work. You will get a harder hitting force than a comparable product while using less compressed air. This makes Super Air Knives especially good for cooling and drying applications, where moving large volumes of air is ideal.
It’s not just our Air Knives that take advantage of the Venturi effect to produce large amplification ratios. Many of our products are designed with efficiency in mind, including our Air Amplifiers, Air Wipes, and Air Nozzles and Jets, to name a few. If you would like to discuss how an EXAIR engineered compressed air product can amplify your process, then give us a call!
Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer
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EXAIR Ion Air Gun in Photo Printing Industry
In the high-precision world of photo printing, even tiny specks of dust or static can ruin a perfect print. From professional labs to industrial photography printers, quality and consistency are everything. That’s where the EXAIR Ion Air Gun steps in, a tool that’s quietly revolutionizing how photo printers manage static charges, clean surfaces, and ensure flawless prints.
The Challenge: Static and Contamination in Photo Printing
Photo printing — whether inkjet, laser, or large-format — is highly sensitive to the environment. Two of the biggest issues that professionals face are:
Static electricity: As paper moves rapidly through printers, it can accumulate static. This attracts dust, causes paper jams, and leads to print defects.
Particulate contamination: Even microscopic dust or fiber can show up as marks, dots, or streaks on glossy prints.
Traditional air blowers or manual wiping often redistribute dust rather than removing it — and they do nothing to neutralize static charge.
The EXAIR Ion Air Gun is engineered to solve both static and contamination problems in one tool. Here’s how it stands out:
Active Static Neutralization
The gun emits a stream of positive and negative ions that neutralizes static charges on surfaces instantly. This helps:
- Reduce paper jams
- Prevent dust attraction
- Improve media handling through print engines
By eliminating static, prints come out cleaner and production runs flow more smoothly.
Ionized Clean Air Blast
Instead of just pushing air around, the ion air gun combines ionization with a strong, focused airflow. This:
- Removes dust and debris from paper or film
- Prepares surfaces before printing
- Cleans out nooks and crannies where particles hide
The result? Cleaner prints with fewer re-runs and less waste.
In the competitive world of photo printing, attention to detail defines success. The EXAIR Ion Air Gun offers a practical, effective solution to two persistent problems — static and contamination. Whether you’re running small-batch professional prints or large industrial photo runs, it can help ensure every print meets the highest standard.
Jordan Shouse, CCASS
Application Engineer / Sales Operations Engineer
From Field to Market: How EXAIR Helps Streamline Vegetable Processing
Homonyms are words that are pronounced and spelled the same but have different meanings. In this blog, I will cover the word lettuce. One meaning is the leafy vegetable and the other is money. And I like to save both. I have an agriculture application that I would like to share where EXAIR was able to supply different products to help save lettuce.
When vegetables come from the field, they need to be cleaned and packaged for delivery to grocery stores. The first thing that they need to do is to wash the leaves to remove dirt, compost, and bugs. They had drilled pipes to spray water onto the leaves, using a lot of water. They were looking to do it more economically. The vegetable packing house purchased the EXAIR PowerStream Liquid Nozzles, model DL8075SS, to do the washing. These stainless steel nozzles were mounted on a manifold to spray water onto the lettuce leaves. With the PowerStream nozzles, we can break the water into smaller droplet sizes to increase coverage and reduce water requirements. Thus, saving money.
The next step would be to dry the lettuce. They were using a blower-powered air knife, but they could not remove all the insects as it was not powerful enough. Also, by blowing hotter air which was created by the blower, lettuce would start to brown much quicker. To improve, they purchased a model 110036SS Stainless Steel Super Air Knife. The Super Air Knife is an efficient, powerful way to blow compressed air. With a 40:1 amplification ratio, it will draw in 40-parts of ambient air to 1-part compressed air. From our Super Air Knife, we blow ambient temperature air, add mass to give a much higher force to remove the water and the insects, and save on compressed air consumption.
To reduce spoilage, you must have the proper equipment. For this company, they were able to improve their process to increase production. And by utilizing less water and less compressed air, they were able to increase profit. If you would like to improve your processes in packing houses, EXAIR has a variety of products that can help you. You can contact an Application Engineer to discuss. For the company above, more lettuce out the door meant more lettuce in their pockets.
John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb
Photo of Vegetables by akadarcee. Pixabay content license.