Month: December 2009

EXAIR Nozzles Save Air and Provide Quick R.O.I.

Published on by Kirk EdwardsLeave a comment

 Just when you thought you had optimized your compressed air system, EXAIR comes along to improve it further. 

One of our customers manufactures X-Ray film. They take the film off of a roll and sheet it. The film sheets run along a vacuum belt to hold them down and hold them flat. The film rides along the belt and runs over a series of gaps in the belt. Each gap is a place where the film can be stacked in sheets. 

At these gaps the customers uses air nozzles to blow on the leading edge of the sheeted film to deposit the film into the stack. Our customer, who had doubts, called to see if we could help save additional compressed air and lower the noise in the system they had fabricated. They had a total of 49 nozzles. 

They were using nozzles which consumed 9 SCFM at 80 PSIG and produced 6 ounces of force on to a target 12″ from the nozzle. The decibel level of the nozzle was 81 dBA. Those number are pretty good, but lets look at what we provided for them. 

Our engineered Nano Super Air Nozzle consumes 8.3 SCFM at 80 PSIG, a total air consumption savings of 34.3 SCFM (49 nozzles). It produces a higher force value of 8.1 ounces on a target 12″ away and runs at a quiet 75 dBA. All improvements of the existing system! 

Just in air alone, for a 16 hour production time which runs 250 days a year we save over 8 million SCFM! And the return on investment is 209 days! 

Not bad for switching out some nozzles. 

Kirk Edwards
Application Engineer
kirkedwards@exair.com

Winter Wonderland

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In my job as an applications engineer I come across some interesting and bizarre applications for EXAIR’s products. I was recently contacted by a parks director who needed to frost up the branches of the trees in the park to effect a winter scene.

They did not have access to a snow making machine so they wanted to cover the trees with ice crystals. Hosing them down with a garden hose weighted the branches down too much and created an ice slick all around the trees.

Installing one end of a siphon tube into the suction end of a model 6092 Vac-U-Gun and the other end into a bucket of hot water, the Vac-U-Gun drew up the hot water, atomized it, and added it to the outgoing air flow. Since it was well below freezing, the hot water fog turned to fine ice crystals that easily coated the branches of the trees. The fine ice crystals glistened in the light and was the exact effect they were looking for.

Joe Panfalone
Application Engineer
joepanfalone@exair.com

Listen to Customers and Succeed

Published on by Kirk EdwardsLeave a comment

This holiday season has been moving along well and been pretty smooth. I have been able to determine what gifts would be good for my sons and daughter, really without a hitch. That is until I realized my daughter is suddenly interested in clothes and earrings and other weird big kid stuff. My days of browsing the cool toy aisles are waning. So even though I had some other things in mind, I realize it is better to pay attention and act accordingly. Much is the same with customers…

Our original Line Vac product has been used to move everything from grains to plastic pellets to fish renderings. They have been on the market for more than ten years and proven to be a product line where listening to our customers has caused numerous expansions within the product line. as we sold more basic units, our customers began to ask for certain modifications.

One of the expansions we made, the Heavy Duty Line Vac, was to offer the Heavy Duty Line Vac for customers who needed to move abrasive materials which would quickly wear the aluminum or stainless steel and also provide a solution for customers who were moving exceedingly heavy materials like shot blast media or iron oxide.

One of our customers who manufacture float glass have been successful for years using our Adjustable Air Amplifiers to lay a nitrogen blanket down on the sheets of glass. Knowing of EXAIR and our product line they called to see if we could aid them in moving iron oxide. Their material weighs in at 176 pounds per cubic foot and they needed to move 75 pounds in 6 minutes, vertically 9 feet.

Since we have done testing on many different materials and distances, we were able to confidently recommend the 2″ Heavy Duty Line Vac for the application. It can move the volume they needed and resist the abrasion of the iron oxide. Just another instance where listening provided a successful win-win between our customer and EXAIR.

Now, wish me luck on the win-win for my daughter and I.

Happy Holidays to everyone.

Kirk Edwards
Application Engineer
kirkedwards@exair.com

Keeping Actuator Shafts Clean

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I was contacted by a customer who processes crushed limestone. As expected, this generates a lot of dust that permeates everything in the area. If you’ve ever had dry walling done in your home you know what I mean.

The equipment used in this process utilizes extremely large and expensive air cylinders. Although wipers are installed to scrape the dust off the actuator rod as it retreats back into the cylinder, some of the abrasive limestone dust gets past or embedded into the wiper.

What gets past the wiper enters the cylinder and destroys the piston rings and the cylinder cannot hold pressure. What gets imbedded into the scraper scores the rod surfaces causing the seals to leak.

Several times a year the cylinders have to be taken apart, new piston rings installed and the rod sent out to be metalized and re-ground. The sheer size of these require a rigger to take them offline. Turn around time usually is a month. The process is time-consuming and expensive.

EXAIR suggest installing a model 2409 Air wipe  around the shaft to blow the contaminants off the cylinder rod as it retracted into the cylinder. The customer reports that they can now go a year between rebuilds.

Joe Panfalone
Application Engineer
joepanfalone@exair.com