Month: May 2014

EXAIR’s Industrial Housekeeping Products are Portable

Published on by Neal RakerLeave a comment

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I had noticed somewhat of a trend in my inquiries regarding our Industrial Housekeeping Products of late. It seems that customers want to use our Chip Vac, Heavy Duty Dry Vac or perhaps the Heavy Duty HEPA Vac with a really long vacuum hose. I’m talking like 50 or 60 feet worth of suction hose. And when I ask the customers why they want such a long hose, they say it is so they can reach all parts of their shop from a central location.

It did not occur to me until now that folks may not realize that, in fact, all of our Industrial Housekeeping Products are made to be moved around the shop, just like you would an electric shop vacuum with casters.

All of our Industrial Housekeeping Products have an industrial drum dolly available for them from the smallest 5 gallon sizes up to the big 110 gallon units. In fact, our Chip Trapper product comes with one included as part of the base system.

If you have a need to vacuum debris from multiple locations, moving the Industrial Housekeeping unit around the shop allows you to keep your vacuum hose as short as possible (we have 10 ft. hoses). With this configuration, you do not suffer the line losses associated with trying to create a vacuum across a 60 ft. long vacuum hose which results in lost performance. Dealing with a 10 ft. hose is also a lot less hassle than a much longer one.  It is a better idea to use a longer compressed air hose to supply your Industrial Housekeeping Vacuum system with compressed air and roll it around to each area where you need to use it. Compressed air travels through hoses much more readily than vacuum flows do.

EXAIR has all the necessary accessory items available including Drum Dollies and compressed air hoses to outfit the Industrial Housekeeping Products.

Neal Raker, Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com

Outside Your Comfort Zone?

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

Over the past several months I have found myself more and more outside of my comfort zone throughout the day.  This feeling has been declining over the past few months, however, as the situations which cause discomfort seem to come up more and more every day so my comfort zone is constantly expanding. I like comfort zones, but also understand that being outside of them helps me to learn and gain new experience. I bring this up because I had a customer come in yesterday so they could be shown a demonstration of an EXAIR Super Air Knife.

Now, customers coming in is not a problem at all, I spoke with him last week and we discussed the application.  This time, it was outside of his comfort zone so he wanted to come in.  Well, when I got the call I had a visitor I grabbed a single business card and walk out to find that there were four gentlemen waiting to see me, not just one.  Still, not a problem. I showed them to our fully stocked demo room and we proceeded to discuss their application.  They were hoping to make the environment their employees work in a little cleaner.  They had new down draft work benches which had three sides on it.

The problem the team was having is that all their operators were using hand-held grinders to deburr parts as they were manufactured.   The downdraft table was added to help prevent the dust and debris from getting all over the operators, however it wasn’t working good enough.  So they started looking and found EXAIR Super Air Knives.  They didn’t believe that a Super Air Knife would move enough air and still be quiet enough to have an operator sitting at the station, so they drove down to our facility and I showed them all the benefits that a Super Air Knife has.  This was all based off a 6″ Aluminum Super Air Knife I had handy.  I then swapped the stock .002″ thick shim out with a .001″ thick shim.  They were amazed at how quiet the Super Air Knife was (with either shim) and how the flow of air was enough to disturb and direct dust but not over powering and blowing parts off the table. LSAN I could definitely see that they were impressed by the simplicity of working with the Super Air Knife and the performance it achieved. But alas, they were still trying to figure out how a 48″ would work, so I went straight out and got a 110048 off the shelf and hooked it up for them.  That was all that they needed in order to really get the wheels in their heads spinning into overdrive.   They all left with my contact information and catalogs in tow but I didn’t hear them stop talking about the possibilities until they were in the car.

The fact of the matter is that they were outside of their comfort zone and had no concept of how you could make compressed air blow in a laminar sheet to help contain dust in a down draft work bench.  Once they saw how easy the Super Air Knife was to hook up and mount they were instantly back into their comfort zone of making their employees happy and safe. If you have some applications using compressed air and you are well out of your zone, contact us.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
 @EXAIR_BF

On the lighter side

Published on by exaircorpLeave a comment

Well, it’s almost everyone’s favorite time of the year, swimsuit season!!!. I said ALMOST everyone. Which means that crash diets and “lighter” fare choices are in full swing. (I know I need to be incorporating these myself).

Sticking with this theme, I thought I would write this week’s blog on our Light Duty Line Vac. These units provide an alternative solution for conveying smaller volumes of material over a short distance.

Available in eight common sizes, ¾” up to 6”, in aluminum construction, these units use less compressed air than our other Line Vac products. The Light Duty Line Vac also has no moving parts and requires no electricity to operate, making them virtually maintenance free!

Light Duty Line VacAir consumption is minimal, ranging from our smallest unit consuming 7.30 SCFM @ 80 PSI, up to our largest unit consuming 80.20 SCFM @ 80 PSI.  You can also control the conveying rate by regulating your compressed air supply pressure.

For even more control, you could add one of our Electronic Flow Control (EFC) which uses timing control and a photoelectric sensor to turn off your compressed air when there is no media/part present.

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To see our complete line of Air Operated Conveyors, visit our website www.EXAIR.com or if you need assistance with an application, please do not hesitate to contact an application engineer at 1-800-903-9247.

 

Justin Nicholl
Application Engineer
JustinNicholl@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_JN

Priming the Pump

Published on by Dave WoernerLeave a comment

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to talk to a customer who was looking to prime a pump to remove a liquid out of an 8 foot deep tank.  He was pulling in the liquid through 1 1/2″ pipe and wanted to prime the pump in 5 seconds.  This was an interesting application for me, because it had some tangible numbers for the design.  In most applications with the E-Vac Vacuum Generators, a customer needs to lift something heavy and they need the job done fast. Those terms are very subjective, and we have to try and prognosticate what vacuum generator will work for the customer. Yesterday was different, the customer had some really defined limits, and I knew what I needed to do in order to satisfy the application.  The engineer in me was very happy with the situation.

Let’s start with the parameters.  He was looking to lift water 8 feet vertically.  8 feet of water corresponds to 7.06 inches of mercury.  The porous E-Vac can generate vacuum up to 21 inches of mercury and the non-porous E-vacs can generate 27 inches of mercury, so all of the E-Vac models can easily draw the liquid up the 8 feet of piping.  This is where most vacuum generator applications stop, but not this one.  If time is not a concern the 800001 will use the least amount of air (1.5 SCFM @ 80 PSIG of inlet) and get the job done, but how long will it take?

This is where you need to use the evacuation charts, from EXAIR.com. Below are two charts from the “Specs” tab for Inline E-Vacs.

E-Vac porous evacuation time

Non-porous Evacuation time

The 1 1/2″ Pipe that is 8 ft. long has volume of around .1 cubic foot.  We need to generate at least a 7.06 inches of mercury, so we will look at the 9 inches of mercury column. It will take the 810002 17.85 seconds to evacuate 1 cubic foot of pipe.  The 800001 will take 14.40 seconds to evacuate the same volume, and  it will use less air.  We will want to use the porous vacuum generator, because we don’t need a very high vacuum to get the job done. If the 800001 can evacuate 1 cubic foot in 14.40 seconds it should be able to evacuate .1 cubic foot in 1.44 seconds which is easily fast enough for the customer.  The math also told us the customer could use up to 27.7 feet of hose to lift up that 8 feet, if he needed to take a non linear path.  If we know that the customer needed to move the fluid more that 27.7 feet, we could move up to the next vacuum generator to get the job done faster, but it was not necessary in this application.

Dave Woerner
Application Engineer
Davewoerner@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_DW