Thermoformed parts are an all too familiar sight in industry. They are used for everything from making the inside shells of refrigerators and dishwashers to in process fixtures to transport delicate items such as flat screen TV’s.  We had one customer who had a thermoformed part that had a particularly deep draw of about 16″ by about 6″ square. He was having a lot of trouble with the debris from a router application getting down into these pockets and creating problem for his parts nesting properly within one another. It also left a trail of debris everywhere these parts went.

So, to clean up his process, the customer ordered an ion air gun for his operator to blow the parts down prior to stacking which eliminated the static and debris issues they had with the finished product.

We are in the middle of static season right now, so if you find yourself in a low humidity room dealing with insulating materials and cannot seem to keep debris from clinging to your parts, or you are receiving the dreaded static discharge, think about having an active static eliminator (ionizer) in hand to take care of the problem. I used to work in plastic injection molding industry and wish I had known about ionizers much sooner than now.

Neal Raker
Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com