Month: September 2011

The Digital Flow Meter Saves Headaches, Time and Money

Published on by Kirk EdwardsLeave a comment

I provided a solution for a company in the tobacco revenue industry who make case packaging, wrapping and labeling machines for cigarette makers. One of their sales reps contacted me with a concern about one of their machine models which demands a great deal of their attention due to a requirement for compressed air. This machine needs a small amount of air for certain features of the machine to work properly.

This particular salesman explained how often they try to remotely trouble-shoot the performance problem of their machine, knowing they are dealing with an air supply issue, but consistently end up arranging flights to visit the customers. The additional costs of trying to solve this common problem is now a real cost burden. He and the service manager were seeking a solution to the problem when they discovered EXAIR’s Digital Flow Meter.

The flow meter is available in many sizes, including the 1″ they needed to fit on their machine’s air inlet. Once outfitted to the machine and hooked up to the air supply of a customer, the Digital Flow Meter will display how much SCFM is reaching the machine. Having the feedback from the digital flow meter will provide the empirical feedback needed to convince the customers they need to supply more air in order for the machine to work properly – without needing to arrange for a service call on site.

This is just one example of where a Digital Flow Meter can save headaches, time and money. They should also be used when benchmarking the air consumption of a production leg within your plant when you implement an air conservation program – this gives you a place to begin conserving compressed air. The Digital Flow Meter will also continue to supply you with feedback about your air savings so you will have hard evidence of air and cost savings – we know your boss wants hard evidence.

A Digital Flow Meter can also be outfitted with a Summing Remote Display to provide feedback in a convenient location from air lines which may be in a difficult location. The Summing Remote Display will also provide average air use over a 24 hour period. You can also hook into the 4-20 mA output of the flow meter to collect data about your air use.

If you are curious about beginning to save compressed air in your production process or providing feedback to your customers about the requirements for your machine, the Digital Flow Meter is a good place to start.

Kirk Edwards
Application Engineer
kirkedwards@exair.com

I Used to Like Euchre, but Now I Just Think About Static

Published on by Brian Farno1 Comment

Euchre was a game I had heard of in highschool and finally learned how to play in my senior year.  Before that we were big Hearts and Spades fans so Euchre wasn’t too far out of the realm.  We played the game before school, during lunch, and a lot of weekend nights where we were all just hanging out.

When I went to college it seemed to be the popular game of choice so the game continued.   I can’t really remember a weekend where a game of Euchre wasn’t being played at some time.  It wasn’t until I was in college that I realized the amount of strategy that went into a good solid hand of Euchre and every time my fraternity brothers and I get together it’s always a part of the night.

The interesting part now is, every time I play a card game I think of a recent application that is rather common for us.  You see when playing cards are being made the card stock all has different humidity levels within the stock depending on where the cards are shipping to.  When the manufacturer runs a card that has a low relative humidity it tends to generate static.

The sheets of printed cards go through a cutting dye which takes a single sheet and cuts it into individual cards.  The cards are then all stacked into one pile and sent through a sorting machine.  All the friction from being cut, stacked, and separated generates a large volume of static.  The card manufacturer I was helping was having an issue where the cards would stick in the sorting machine and not drop into the individual deck boxes.  There was a laundry list of obstacles that were not in favor of a large footprint ionizer.  The cards were traveling in a confined area along with a very high rate of speed.  (So fast you couldn’t see the space between them unless you followed a single card.)  This meant we had minimal entrainment time and very limited space to eliminate the static in, not to mention since the cards were being conveyed the friction was regenerating the static rapidly.  The solution was to install an Ion Air Jet at the separating station so the static would be eliminated at the initial point of sorting and then to blanket the individual sorting chutes with ionized air from a Super Ion Air Knife.

This allowed us to blow ionized air through the working chamber of the card sorter which not only eliminated the static on the cards and solved the card jamming issue but it also helped to blow any trim or dust into the bottom of the machine for easy cleanup.

If you have any questions about how a Static Eliminator can help with your application feel free to contact us.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

My Favorite Time of the Year

Published on by Lee EvansLeave a comment

As the season begins to change and I’m greeted by the crisp air in the morning, I realize that autumn is upon us (officially starts tomorrow).  Fall is by far my favorite season!  The cool air outside, just enough to make you appreciate the refuge of a warm house, and the harvest and food that comes this time of year are the best!  Oh yeah, and there’s football…

Football has an enormous fan base here is America, but it has had trouble becoming appealing on a global scale.  Crossing borders is not something the NFL has done well, but another sport, the UFC, has managed to do so with great success.  I attribute this success to the nature of the sport.  Mankind has always been keenly interested in fighting and combat, since our inception.

Something else that crosses borders well is saving money/time and increasing efficiency.  The products we design here at EXAIR are meant to do just that.  We focus on saving compressed air and solving application specific problems in the most efficient manner possible.  Both of these focal points have saved our clients an immeasurable amount of time and money over the years.

If you have an application in need of cost savings or efficiency improvement, contact the application engineering department at
EXAIR.

Lee Evans
Application Engineer
leeevans@exair.com
@exair_le

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

If you haven’t received a visit already, a Cub Scout should be coming through your neighborhood, door to door, selling Boy Scout Popcorn. They’ll be fulfilling their part of the Law of The Pack (“The Cub Scout helps the Pack go”) and is their main (and usually only) fundraiser for the year. I hope you’ll consider supporting this fine organization. Also, the Chocolatey Triple Delight is just about the best thing to happen to popcorn EVER. Word of warning: the package says there are 17 servings; I consistently find only three.

In addition to “help(ing) the Pack go,” the boys are also aiming at membership to the $600 Club – sales of this level gets the Scout a variety of prizes: choices of several different Gift Cards, tickets to a Cincinnati Cyclones hockey game, and a very cool little gadget called a Zyclone, which David Letterman seemed to master almost immediately:

Me, I was lucky to clear a couple of feet with my Zyclone (yes, I have one…as our Boy Scout District’s “Popcorn Kernel,” I have one to show off to the Scouts…and it’s a great little perk, I might add), but with a few adjustments of my aim and a little finessing of my technique, I became almost as proficient as my nine-year-old son was on his second shot.

That’s the way it is with a lot of compressed air product applications, too. A Super Air Knife may perform better if you mount it at a different angle or distance from the part(s) you’re trying to cool, dry, or blow off. There are a couple of “tips and tricks” to get a better conveyance rate from a Line Vac. If your Reversible Drum Vac isn’t pumping like it used to, there are quick and easy things to try before replacing it. Same same for Static Eliminators, by the way.

So, if your aim needs adjusted, or your technique finessed, give me a call. I may be relatively new at this, but my learning curve is steep, and I’m eager to share the wealth of knowledge I’m accumulating. If I don’t know the answer, I’m surrounded by those more experienced and knowledgeable than I, who are just as eager to help. And if I just can’t find the answer, I have a Zyclone of my own to put theory to practice with.

Oh, and if your question is about EXAIR products, that’s OK too…if I don’t know the answer, I can tap the brains & know-how of the rest of the Application Engineering team, as well as the resources of our Efficiency Lab to get you the answers you need.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
(513)671-3322 local
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(513)671-3363 fax
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