Month: December 2008

Wrangling Cotton Balls

Published on by Neal RakerLeave a comment

I had a customer call in the other day who manufactures and packages cotton balls used in the medical and cosmetics industries. The customer has to interface two machines; a cotton ball manufacturing machine and a form, fill & seal machine where the balls are packaged. The customer has looked into ways in which to move the machines close enough that the balls of cotton could just drop from one to the other. They have even looked into small bucket conveyors. But none of the choices seemed to be as clear cut and inexpensive to execute as using a Light Duty Line Vac. Also, by using the Light Duty Line Vac, they could locate their machines relative to one another in places where they made more sense from a floor space point of view. They were originally looking to install the cotton ball machine up 72 inches in the air so the balls could drop right into the packaging machine. Again, all of the alternate choices had serious drawbacks due to price or difficulty to execute.

The customer ended up going with Model 132300 (3″ Light Duty Line Vac Kit) and a 20 ft. length of hose to accomodate the movement of the material from one machine to the next.

The Light Duty Line Vac option was clearly the more economical option that made the most sense to the customer. The Light Duty Line Vac solution was easily less than ½ the cost of the other solutions that the customer had considered. The Light Duty Line Vac works flawlessly to convey the 2000 cotton balls/minute required.

Neal Raker
Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com

Line Vac Part of Turnkey Solution

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This past week, I spoke to someone at an Engineering consulting company who makes turnkey automation systems for various industries.  He was looking to incorporate one of our Line Vacs into a system that conveys small discs that had been punched out of cardboard sheets.  The discs needed to be carried from the collection bin they drop into after being punched out, a few feet away to a funnel assembly.  This funnel has a small rectangular opening at the outlet, where the discs pass through single file, to then be counted by a laser counting system. 

I recommended our model 6084 2″ Aluminum Line Vac.  It will support all the various disc sizes that need to be moved.  It will be mounted on the bottom of the collection bin so that it will be gravity fed, and no discs will be missed.  I also recommended using a pressure regulator to fine-tune the inlet pressure so that the feed rate from the Line Vac into the funnel doesn’t create a backlog or overload the laser counting system and further contribute to jam-ups and miscounts.

We Improved the Results, What Else Would You Expect?

Published on by Kirk EdwardsLeave a comment

This is what our products do all day long… Problem one is a home-made blow off consisting of four open tubes, each with a 1/4″ inside diamter. Each tube running at 80 PSIG consumes around 35 SCFM and runs upwards of 85 decibels. Problem two is even with all this air blowing around an iron sprinkler pipe, the rinse water is not being removed well enough for a good finish. This pipe gets coated with a UV cured lacquer as the last finishing step and the water prevents a good finish. The maximum diameter of the sprinkler pipe is 2″ which is a good fit for our 3″ Super Air Wipe. Problem one, high air consumption, is brought down from 140 SCFM to 39.8 SCFM at 80 PSIG. Problem two, uneven removal of water and high decibels, is remedied by providing a complete 360 degree blow off at 79 decibels. Ultimately, the bad finish upon the sprinkler pipe is no longer a problem area of the process, the customer has saved air, and the environmental noise levels are reduced. EXAIR expects nothing less, why should you?

Kirk Edwards
Application Engineer
kirkedwards@exair.com

Stepping Over $$$ to Save a Nickel

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It perplexes me  how many times I run into blow off applications using open pipes with their ends smashed down. I guess being in the business so long I forget that at one time I too was uninformed how wasteful and inefficient this practice is.

With our nation becoming energy conscious, compressed air conservation should be foremost in the minds of process engineers. The Compressed Air Challenge Organization, a D.O.E. sponsored group, recommends the use of Intellegent Compressed Air Products  like the Super Air Knife, Super Air Amplifier, and Super Air Nozzles.

Here is the latest application that I did with a company that makes brake rotors. In a machining operation they were using open pipe to blow out chips. When they came to me they were focused on chip control and were unaware of  how much compressed air they were wasting and that open pipe is in violation of an OSHA directive.

As you can see in the picture, they were using three 3/8″  tubes.

open-pipe-blow-off

Consulting the engineering tables, at 80 PSI these will consume 87 SCFM of compressed air each for a total of 261 SCFM. Actual consumption would be less because the ends where squished down Assuming a conservative 30% we estimated 78 SCFM air usage.

They istalled a Model 120020 Super Air Amplifier which uses only 6.1 SCFM of compressed air and delivers 219 SCFM of air onto the product.

al-blow-off

Doing the math, we saved 65.8 SCFM of air and delivered 141 CFM more air onto the product which is why this setup blew the chips away more effectively than the open pipe. Sound levels went down to 68 dbA and they became OSHA compliant because the Air Amplifier cannot be dead ended.

Based on a 3-shift, 250-day workyear, annual compressed air savings amounted to $7800. Pretty nice cost savings for the price of a $71 air amplifier!

Joe Panfalone
Application Engineer
joepanfalone@exair.com