If you can’t tell by the title this is the closest reason I could come up with to use one of the greatest rock bands songs in a blog.  While Rock ‘N’ Roll isn’t noise pollution, wastes of compressed air and inefficient, non-engineered, unsafe blow offs are.  We recently had a customer send the product they were using to blow trays off in for an Efficiency Lab study.  Their main concern was not their compressed air consumption, rather they were concerned with speeding up the process and lowering the noise level in the area.  The process was blowing off a parts tray to eliminate the static and debris on the tray.

The current process was to use a competitive hand held static eliminating air gun.  After performing tests on the unit, we measured that it consumed 18.5 SCFM and produced 96 dBA when operated at 75 PSIG.  This was the customers operating pressure.  As mentioned before, the customers main concern was to speed up the process. They wanted a hands-free solution, along with reducing the noise level in the area, to make it better for the operator.

I suggested to install a 9″ Super Ion Air Knife Kit, along with a foot valve, to provide a blow off station for the trays.  The trays’ 8″ width allows for a little bit of play on either side of the tray when the operator passes them through the ionized air stream.  The operator will use their foot to activate the compressed air to the knife then pass the tray under the Super Ion Air Knife twice, once for each side.  By allowing them to have both hands free for operation this means they can be picking up the next tray while the first piece is being processed, thus speeding up their production.

The other requirement was the noise level. The Super Ion Air Knife will only have to be operated at 40 psig inlet pressure. This is going to reduce the noise level from 96 dBA at three feet away to 61 dBA.  This means that, if there are no other noise polluters in the area, his operators may be able to eliminate hearing protection all together.

If meeting the customers requirements weren’t enough, we are also able to help them save their compressed air.  The savings will be 3.2 SCFM per station that is upgraded.  Because there was not a specific time period specified in the study, I will not estimate any annual cost savings but it will most definitely add up for the customer.

If you have a compressed air process you would like to see improved, give us a call, and don’t forget to crank it up!

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF