It is clear from watching my sons that having super hero qualities and powers is something they think of often. My youngest desires to be like the Human Torch from The Fantastic Four, so he has given himself a proper name – The Match.
His brother tends to desire all of the coolest qualities from a variety of different super heroes, he prefers the power of sonar, unlimited strength, X-ray vision and the power of producing force fields. He has let me know that any super hero with these kinds of power would be so well-known that a cool name would not be necessary.
So as I make my way through the house and our typical town environment it is not unusual for me to be set ablaze or saved from falling leaves or even bird poo by a force field. I know, I know…yes my life is full of danger, exciting and enviable.
It does, however, bring to light a quality of our Super Air Knives; the laminar air flow which is often used to create a barrier like a force field. I recently spoke with a customer who machines wood with a CNC router. The router is shrouded on three sides by brushes to help contain the wood dust for the vacuum system to remove. The fourth side is open so the tool changer can switch bits. They outfitted this open side with a Super Air Knife to assist keeping more dust contained and removed.
It is also common to keep heat inside of an oven by mounting a Super Air Knife at the opening and blowing air a t a very slight angle into the oven. This has helped many customers from losing additional heat out of the ovens.
And barriers to contain coolant mist inside of a machine or to keep spatter from falling on lenses of laser cutting machines are also tried and true solutions. It stands to reason that if we can help with weld spatter and mist, we can also contain fumes and smoke for many applications.
So the next time you would like to implement a “force field” at work let us know, you too can be a super hero.
Kirk Edwards
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
