Month: September 2010

The Trials and Tribulations of a Would Be Traveler

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Bob, a friend of mine, spends his time-saving money (he’s not married) so he can go on jaunts around the world.  I’ve done my fair share of traveling but he seems to have been almost everywhere. In March of this year 2010 he already had plans to visit Shanghai. I thought I’ve been to China and enjoyed my visit immensely but why rave over Shanghai ? He never answered apart from saying the Expo 2010! I didn’t question  him further.

Months later I had an invitation from a friend to visit China. I had previously learned to eat with chop sticks and cannot pass a Chinese restaurant without my mouth-watering so it was no hardship for me to accept. My wife was just happy to get me out from under feet so she could tinker in the garden. So off I went the bag in hand, with a very eye-catching ice blue pull behind so I could easily see it among all the hordes of black bags.

I checked in, waved good-bye to the pull behind and made my way to security. I don’t have one of those  frequent  traveler cards that allow you, for a fee of cause and back ground check to breeze through security so I was in for “the full Monty”  which means removing belts, shoes, being scrutinized and formally introduced to the latest screening gizmo. Even the Fiji water had to be discarded for some tasteless substitute only to find all the retailers are buying a substitute.  Oh for the days of yester year when traveling was exciting, there were no security level alerts and no one monopolized the choice of water. Don’t get me wrong I like to feel and be safe but where do we go from here? What is the next step?

Twelve hours later the FUN began: the connection arrived  45 minutes late, giving me only 30 minutes to catch my last flight. Obviously the connection was in another concourse, one floor up at the last gate.  I ran like someone crazy but when I saw security my heart dropped, but something miraculous happened,  I showed my ticket and they rushed  my bag through while I went through the metal detector which beeped, thirty seconds later after the” wand  treatment” I was on my way and caught the plane.

Remember that  very eye-catching pull behind which could be easily seen  among the hordes of black bags it was nowhere to be seen. When everyone had gone this very official looking  Chinese man approach, he asked if there was a problem? I explained the situation, he keyed in my claim tag number in his smart phone and one minute later he said it’s in Japan!? He confidently said the pull behind would be my hotel in two days. Wow I thought that’s efficient but then came the paper work. So many printers without  paper or ink so he settled for the old-fashioned  way  pen and paper.

The next installment of this trip will show the wonders and surprises found at EXPO 2010 Shanghai.

Ivan Banks
Business Development
IvanBanks@EXAIR.com

For Those Modern Day Gold Prospecters out there

Published on by Neal RakerLeave a comment

Jeff from California called in yesterday and was interested in our 2 inch size, Heavy Duty Line Vac. He was naturally curious about what pressure and volume compressed air flow he would need to run this unit properly. These are all the usual things that folks are interested to know about our products.  After a bit more discussion, I come to find out that his hobby is prospecting for gold in dry river beds. I have to admit that the first image that came to my mind was like the one posted below.

The next one that came to my mind was that of a bunch of old guys (my affectionate  name for retirees),  running around with metal detectors, finding everything from old bottle caps to lumps of gold just inches below the surface of the ground.

Jeff only scratched the surface about what he wanted to do but it had to do with a process called “dry washing” river bed gravel or “high bank” as I believe he referred to it. I’m not an “old guy” yet, but this kind of activity, I must say sounded quite interesting, especially with the possibility of a big payoff! My curiosity got the better of me and so, I looked around on the Internet and began to understand this whole process and that there is a community out there for whom this is, at a minimum, a serious hobby.

Dry washing is a process where the prospector has a pile of dry sediment material which consists of various sizes of gravel, sand, silt and hopefully some gold. Dry washing is basically a technique of sizing materials by size and by density so that you end up with a concentration of the finest and most dense material at the end. The concentrated material is further processed with water to hopefully end up with some gold.  I know my description of this process is not quite technically correct, but you get the idea that you have to process a lot of material to get down to a few pieces of gold. Check out this video explaining the process of dry washing.

Another issue that came to the forefront in my research about the dry washing method is that there is no shortage of the “do it yourselfer” types out there constructing their own rigs for this purpose. They range in size from small, manual units up to large, trailer mounted systems that can process many cubic yards of material per hour.

OK, so what does this have to do with my friend Jeff and the Heavy Duty Line Vac? Perhaps you have already guessed it. His interest was in getting the raw material into the dry washer that he had constructed in the first place. Most people feed their dry washer with a shovel or a 5 gallon bucket. On larger machines, this is pretty much a two-man operation to keep the unit fed properly.  And so, with the use of a mobile air compressor, the Heavy Duty Line Vac and some vacuum hose, he could simply vacuum up the material and be free to collect from anywhere he wanted within a 50 ft. radius of his dry washer and keep the dry washer fed with an appropriate amount of material to keep it operating at its optimum throughput.

Yeah, it’s a little out of the ordinary for us around here, but who wants to hear about another, run of the mill conveying application anyway?

Neal Raker
Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (for Sports Fans)

Published on by Bryan PetersLeave a comment

Don’t you love this time of year?  Kids are returning to school.  And the sports calendar is about to explode.  I was thinking about this over the last week or so.  Things are about to get really, really hectic.

  • Here in Ohio, high school football has begun.  My son is a senior this year, so we are all hoping for a winning and memorable year (that is injury-free).  Friday (and sometimes Saturday) nights are spent under the lights with a few thousand close friends.
  • College football kicks off tonight for many teams.  Ohio State vs. Marshall will get particular interest here at EXAIR.  Remember the old days when colleges played on Saturdays?  Thanks to conference agreements with the various television networks, college football is now spread over 4 or 5 days per week.
  • Pro football kicks off next weekend, but until then, we have Hard Knocks (where’s Revis?), fantasy team drafts (here’s a great take from Jim Rome), and office pools to arrange (wait, scratch that, it’s illegal).  Again, thanks to TV, there are games on Sunday, Monday and the occasional Thursday.
  • Baseball pennant races are coming down the stretch (has anyone seen the Cardinals lately?).  Everyone plays at least six days a week for the next month.

There are so many choices, so many options, and so many things to watch and/or attend that it really can be overwhelming.  I know our family calendar is littered with commitments over the next couple of months.

With life, just like in business, you have to set priorities and stay organized if you are going to achieve your goals.  As busy as the leisure/social/personal calendar seems to be these days, we’ve been even busier at EXAIR.

In the past month, here are a few things that have been going on at EXAIR:

  • We visited our distributors in China and Singapore
  • Our distributor from China visited EXAIR
  • We officially launched our partnership with a new distributor in Norway
  • We press released our new, larger, 110-gallon Chip Trapper
  • We press released our one-of-a-kind line of PVDF Super Air Knives
  • We launched our new video demo for EXAIR Line Vac Air Operated Conveyors

And the days and weeks ahead won’t be any less hectic:

  • EXAIR will announce three new products next week
  • EXAIR will have two more press releases in September for new products
  • EXAIR will also have more major announcements regarding compliance in September
  • EXAIR will host our distributor from the Netherlands next week
  • EXAIR will once again compete for Plant Engineering “Product of the Year” honors

On top of all of that, several members of the EXAIR team will be attending the IMTS 2010 trade show in Chicago in a couple of weeks.  If you are going to be there and would like to discuss an application, e-mail us so that we can pre-arrange the meeting.

As you can see, both sides of the ledger are quite full these days, and that is not a bad thing at all.

Bryan Peters
President
bryanpeters@exair.com

Achieve Your Compressed Air Reduction Goals

Published on by Kirk EdwardsLeave a comment

The Compressed Air Challenge and EXAIR agree, install engineered air nozzles in place of wasteful open-blowing applications. The result will save air, lower noise and provide safety.

In their Best Practices for Compressed Air Systems manual, the Compressed Air Challenge specifically states: “Make sure the application uses only the required amount of compressed air. Higher than needed pressures and extended cycle times will result in excessive air usage. Open-blowing applications waste compressed air. For existing open-blowing applications, inexpensive energy-saving nozzles should be applied unless another practical method can be found.”

Here is an example of the money ONE Super Air Nozzle can save. The results shown on the below image are customizable by entering your application details at our Air Savings Calculator Page. If you would like any help in using this tool please contact us.

A payback time of 3 days!? You must be joking!

This is no joke, just a simple illustration of how easy it is to save compressed air. How inexpensive it is to greatly improve your compressed air efficiency. And how effective you will be toward reducing your compressed air consumption. And as added benefits you will be providing a reduction in sound levels and an increase in safety.

We can help if you have 1/4″ or 3/8″ open-blowing applications too. In fact we have helped customers who were using 1/2″, 3/4″ and 1″ open pipes for their applications. You can have engineered air nozzles in-house tomorrow (we ship same day on PO’s before 3:00 pm eastern) and retrofit your open-blowing applications. You can quickly get closer to achieving your goals to reduce compressed air consumption.

And don’t forget to check this U. S. rebate database, your local utility or government to discover if more incentives exist to use compressed air saving products.

Kirk Edwards
Application Engineer
KirkEdwards@EXAIR.com
http://twitter.com/exair_ke