Month: November 2009

Pnuematic Cuttings Dryer

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To lubricate well drill bits, a special liquid lubricant is circulated down and back out the hole. Along with it comes ground up rock which has to be separated before the liquid coolant is recirculated back to the drill head. This is done by passing it through a screen separator.

The issue is that the particulate is wet, which means that some of the coolant goes out the waste stream. The coolant is expensive. If any and all of it can be recovered, it presents a considerable cost savings.

Bill Billeaud, an inventor, came up with a way to blow the wet grindings with a Model 110006 6″ Super Air Knife, against a separation screen to blow the coolant off and recover more of the coolant.

Here is a video of the concept http://vimeo.com/7649488 

Joe Panfalone
Application Engineer
joepanfalone@exair.com

It’s All in the Fine Adjustment

Published on by Kirk EdwardsLeave a comment

My young son made me aware of a fine adjustment he made for himself on Saturday morning. As he strolled through the kitchen I quickly noticed the shortness of his pants, not to mention they had holes in the knees and tattered hems. I first mentioned how much he has grown and how much taller he is since the last time he wore those pants, and then went on to state how clearly short they were.

     He offered me a simple answer “It’s OK Dad, I put on long socks”. An in arguable and true testament to our ability to make fine adjustments.

EXAIR largely shows all of the performance numbers for our products at 80 PSIG. It is in part because we know it is a common available pressure from our customer base. It also saves some space when printing material or setting up web pages etc…

Some customers assume that this is the only working pressure of the products, which is not the case. All of our blow off products and static eliminators perform very well and provide solutions from 10 PSIG up to a maximum of 250 PSIG of inlet pressure. And any of the pressures in between can be produced with a simple pressure regulator.

In fact, we include a pressure regulator in any of the blow off or static eliminator product kits. A pressure regulator is an important part of keeping your compressed air applications as efficient as possible. A rule of thumb states every 2 PSIG of decreased pressure saves 1% compressed air energy cost.

Regulating the pressure not only allows you to operate your application at as low a pressure as possible but also allows you to adjust the results of the blow off application. A common application for a Super Air Wipe has been to produce the proper amount of finish coating on round stock like tool handles or coated metal tubes. This cannot be adjusted with a blower product or without a pressure regulator. A Super Air Knife is also commonly used to produce specific thickness of a coating on webs or other flat stock, a pressure regulator is the key to success.

Just think of it as putting on long socks.

Kirk Edwards
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation

Blow Drying Eggs

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My customer processes and packages eggs. Eggs are transported via a spool conveyor. As the conveyor progresses, the spools rotate, turning the eggs so they can be exposed to the wash nozzles. The eggs are then dried with a blower, which for the most part got the eggs dry but not the spools. The wet spools then would re-wet the eggs.

 Using a model 110024 Super Air Knife they were able to direct a thin stream of air between the rows of eggs directly onto the spools. This dried the spools and eliminated carry over back onto the eggs.

Joe Panfalone
Application Engineer
joepanfalone@exair.com

Tube Maker Cleans Surface to Improve Ink Jet Marking

Published on by Neal RakerLeave a comment

Customer manufactures seemless metal tubing in various sizes. After sizing, tube is washed, rinsed, dried and labeled with ink jet printing system.  Problem was the tubing was not being dried well enough by original blowing system which was a simple copper tube aimed at only one part of the tube circumference.

Customer moved to use Model 2402 2″ Super Air Wipe to blow the entire tube off prior to printing. Tube was completely dry and print job came out nicely. Customer was completely happy as they were able to get a much dryer product using less air than they did previously.

This is a very straight forward application where using compressed air more efficiently and effectively, using EXAIR product, produces superb results in final product quality.

Neal Raker
Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com