Month: June 2010

Have It Your Way

Published on by Bryan PetersLeave a comment

I can happily report that after reading my last blog entry, my son was too busy laughing to challenge the father-son line of demarcation, at least for now.

Back in the 1970’s, Burger King launched their “Have It Your Way” ad campaign to position themselves as a more flexible competitor to McDonald’s strict menu.  As we all know, everything we see on television or in movies is simply fodder for a remake at some future date.  In true Hollywood and Madison Avenue fashion, BK rolled out this epically bad update a few years back…

BK was willing to adapt their offerings to your own personal preferences or needs instead of offering a rigid list of difficult-to-customize products.

At EXAIR, we can relate to that approach.

Imagine for a moment, if you are just an import-export warehouse that simply buys parts from the lowest bidder around the globe, how difficult it might be to give a customer exactly what they want.  Even if you could actually deliver the goods, how long might it take and how much would it cost if you simply have no engineering or manufacturing capabilities of your own?

As both the designer and manufacturer of our own line of products, EXAIR has all the capabilities we need to offer custom solutions, and we do it just about every day.  In fact, we actually publish photos of many custom configurations in our catalog and on our website just to make sure that our customers know that we can and will make something special for them if that is what is needed to get the job done and make their application successful.

Here are a few examples:

curved super air knife

 

Need a custom length Super Air Knife?  No problem.

How about an Air Amplifier or a Line Vac with different connections at both ends?  No problem.

Can I get a Cabinet Cooler System with different temperature settings?  No problem.

How about a special Super Air Knife for a cleanroom?  No problem.

If a vendor is unable or unwilling to customize their products to your specific requirements, that should be a very large red flag.  Either the vendor doesn’t care about your needs, simply doesn’t have the capabilities to accommodate them, or most likely both.

How many vendors like that do you need?

Thankfully, EXAIR is happy to let you “Have It Your Way”.

Bryan Peters
President
bryanpeters@exair.com

About Vortex Tubes

Published on by Kirk EdwardsLeave a comment

Vortex Tubes are a phenomenon of physics generally used for spot cooling and we get many questions about them. Typically we have customers ask “how do they work?” or “when did you come up with them?”. The latter question is the easy answer…

We did not come up with Vortex Tubes, George Ranque did in 1928. George was developing and testing a vortex pump he designed and observed a warm air exhaust and cold air exhaust from opposite ends of his pump. He got so excited about this development, he shut down the research and development of the pump he was working on and jumped headlong into the commercial potential of this hot and cold air product. He started a small firm which soon failed and the visibility of the Vortex Tube along with it.

Recognition of a Vortex Tube increased again in 1945 with a scientific paper published by  Rudolph Hilsch. The paper became popular enough to raise awareness and continued interest in the potential of Vortex Tubes.

The first question, “how do they work?”, is the tough one. First, here is what they do – A Vortex Tube uses compressed air as a power source, has no moving parts, and produces hot air from one end and cold air from the other. The volume and temperature of these two airstreams are adjustable with a built-in valve on the hot air exhaust. Temperatures as low as -50F (-46C) and as high as +260F (+127C) are possible.

Again, how do they work? Nobody knows for certain. If I could choose who to try to explain it I would choose Julius Sumner Miller to explain it, there is nothing this guy couldn’t explain, but alas, he is no longer with us. We can still enjoy his passion for physics (and his unique delivery) through YouTube. Here he discusses Bernoulli, the video is a bit long but take the opportunity to learn about Professor Miller if you have the time.

Nobody has been able to “do the math” to prove exactly how it functions but there is a widely accepted theory. Compressed air is supplied to the Vortex Tube and passes through nozzles tangent to an internal counterbore. These nozzles set the air in a vortex motion. This spinning stream of air turns 90 degrees and passes down the hot tube (thin tube part of a Vortex Tube) in the form of a spinning shell, like a tornado. A valve at one end of the tube allows some of the warmed air to escape. What does not escape heads back down the tube as a second vortex inside the low pressure area of the larger vortex. This inner vortex loses heat and exhausts through the other end as cold air.

While one airstream moves up the tube and the other down it, both rotate in the same direction at the same angular velocity. That is, a particle in the inner stream completes one rotation in the same amount of time as a particle in the outer stream. However, because of the principle of conservation of angular momentum, the rotational speed of the smaller vortex might be expected to increase. (The conservation principle is demonstrated by spinning skaters who can slow or speed up their spin by extending or drawing in their arms.) But in the Vortex Tube, the speed of the inner vortex remains the same. Angular momentum has been lost from the inner vortex. The energy that is lost shows up as heat in the outer vortex. Thus the outer vortex is warm and the inner vortex is cooled.

Yes, I know – you too are longing for Professor Julius Sumner Miller to explain. Thanks for reading.

Kirk Edwards
Application Engineer
kirkedwards@exair.com

We’ve Come a Long Way Baby

Published on by Leave a comment

In seventies we thought we were on the cutting edge of technology if we had a touch tone phone and an electric (no battery operated ones yet) calculator with a square root key.

In the eighties we were in tall cotton with a networked computer system running a point of sale program offered by Radio Shack, life couldn’t get better.

In the nineties we had cell phones as big as a brick, PC’s with color screens and not the monochrome green, automated reorder systems for parts, equipment service tracking, and some of us were dabbling in something called the world-wide web thinking it might actually be used someday by customers looking for us.

Entering the 21st century, everyone is carrying around laptops, I-pads, flip phones with built-in cameras and all are interconnected. Service techs and sales staff can access equipment, customer and part records with just a few mouse clicks. Trucks get tracked and dispatched with the use of global positioning, and the internet has become an integral part of our business and personal communications.

At dinner parties, when asked what I do for a living, a frequent riposte is ” so you work for an old school brick and mortar company” In actuality nothing can be further from the truth. I counter question them as to how high-tech is their customer service.

  • Can their customers talk directly with technical staff by online chat, e-mail. phone, and FAX ? EXAIR customers can.
  • Can their customers attain product information, prints, manuals, and pricing 24/7 ? EXAIR customers can. All this is posted on the internet.
  • Does their company interact with their customers through social media? EXAIR interacts with customers through Facebook, Twitter, and Blogging.

By now the conversation has generated shuffling feet and lowered eyes because they have come to realize their company’s automated telephone system is akin to the “old school” electric calculator.

Joe Panfalone
Application Engineer
joepanfalone@exair.com

Do Your Compressed Air Processes Always Have To Be On?

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

With all the talk of conserving energy and lowering our energy consumption going around, optimization of your compressed air system is vital to reducing the consumption your operations use.  One of the key ways you can optimize your system is by implementing an Electronic Flow Control wherever possible. 

         

   The advantage to using an EFC on your system is you will decrease your air consumption as long as your process can be shut off for even a second or less.  Think of the grass in your yard.  You don’t water it continuously throughout the day like in the video below.

Come to think of it I’m not sure I have ever seen someone water their lawn quite like that…back to the point.  When most people water their lawn they only use the water when the yard needs it or for a set time, this is achieved with devices like the following video portrays.

This is one of the ways to “Optimize” the system so that water is not being wasted.  The EXAIR EFC offers the same type of control for your compressed air operations.  Whether it is blowing parts off as they come down a conveyor line, sucking up some trim or debris on a given interval, or even ejecting parts from a line, the EFC has dozens of programmable modes and offers the conservation of your compressed air. 

For example if you run a conveyor with products that need to be blow off and are 6” long, have a 6” gap between each product you could set the sensor and the timing unit for the EFC to save up to 50% of your compressed air.  There have been multiple uses across multiple industries that have saved thousands of dollars for our customers.   To check out some of the applications where the EFC has cut air consumption please follow this link.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com