Month: June 2014

Preventing Quality Defects in Laminated Autoglass

Published on by Dave WoernerLeave a comment

This week I had the opportunity to work with a customer that manufactures automotive glass. Part of the process of manufacturing the glass is to apply a thin plastic film of polyvinyl butyral (PVB) in between glass sheets.

 

This creates the laminated safety glass that protects passengers from flying glass shards in the event of an accident.

glass
The customer was having a quality problem. Glass was being rejected on their low volume compound curved glass production line for debris being trapped between the layers during the laminating process. We worked on identifying how the dust could be introduced into his laminating process. First, each of the glass panels are cleaned by hand with a cleaner and a soft cloth to remove any dirt, grease or oil that can be left behind from production, shipping, or handling. The soft cloth can leave behind some lint.

On the high production line, a cleaning roller would remove any lint left behind on the flat glass. On the curved glass of the low production line, the curvature of the glass prevented the roller from applying even pressure across the glass and was leaving lint of the cleaning cloth is left behind.  This lint will become a defect in the glass after the glass is cured in an oven.

Ion Air Gun

I recommended the customer use an Ion Air Gun immediately after the hand cleaning cloth step since the Ion Air Gun is also a manual, hand held product. The PVB is pulled from a stack of thin film which generates a static charge from dragging one sheet over another and increasing the chance that lint will stick. The Ion Air Gun will remove the static charge and blow off the lint just prior to lamination. If this was a high volume product, I would have recommend one of our long one piece Super Ion Air Knives to cover the whole piece of glass in a single blow off. Because this was already a manual process due to a low volume specialty glass, the Ion Air Gun is the best product for the job.

Dave Woerner
Application Engineer
Davewoerner@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_DW

 

Image from me and the sysop. Creative Commons

More Than You Asked For? Not A Problem.

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

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EXAIR’s brand-new Catalog #27 came out yesterday. It contains 168 pages of details on our fifteen distinct lines of Intelligent Compressed Air Products. When you make products, like we do, that range from coating to cooling to conveying to cleaning to conservation (and those are just the ones we put on the cover), we can hardly blame folks for calling with one product in mind, and finding that another (sometimes) completely different product is the ideal solution to their application…and perhaps another part of their application as well. I had the pleasure of assisting an OEM machine manufacturer with the perfect example of this just the other day:

This customer makes machinery for the food industry. They were experimenting with a machine for a candy maker – small fruit gum candies are fed into a bowl hopper, where they needed to have a static charge eliminated for the next part of their proprietary process. The machine maker had procured a fan-type ionized air blower, which did a decent job of removing the static, but they also needed a way to keep the candies separated…they don’t call them “gummies” for nothing, right?

Anyway, they were looking for suggestions for an air nozzle to provide a little blast of air to break up the ones that were stuck together, and were concerned about disturbing the ionized air flow. In essence, they didn’t want to trade one problem for another. This actually made them quite interested to hear about our Static Eliminators, which could potentially eliminate the cost, space, and installation of their current ionized air blower.

The concentrated airflow of the Model 7294 Ion Air Jet (with Power Supply) is able to be directed to a precise spot in the bowl, and, as the candies pass through, they’re both separated and neutralized of their static charge. This turned into a real all-in-one solution, AND an introduction of a new (to them) EXAIR product line.

EXAIR's Ion Air Jet provides focused blowoff AND static elimination...an all-in-one solution.
EXAIR’s Ion Air Jet provides focused blowoff AND static elimination…an all-in-one solution.

If you want to find out how an EXAIR product can contribute to the efficiency of your process, or the value of your OEM machinery designs, give us a call.  Don’t be surprised, though, if we offer you more than you asked for.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
www.exair.com
twitter.com/exair_rb
facebook.com/exair

Teamwork

Published on by exaircorpLeave a comment

Well, my son’s first season of tee ball is coming to an end and I must admit that I am kind of bummed. What are we going to do with our Tuesday and Thursday evenings now that there aren’t any more practices? What about Saturdays or Sundays now that the game schedule is complete? Oh that’s right, he is a very busy 5 year old so I am quite sure he will have our time more than occupied.

T-Ball

Last night he wanted to get in some extra batting practice so he would be able to “hit that sucker out of here” at their last game. (who knows where he gets this stuff? hmmm?) While we were “practicing” (he was batting while I was running all over the place to retrieve the ball), we began talking about how much he has learned and what he liked most about playing. His answer – he likes running the bases the best. (I thought for sure it would be batting).

I asked what he was going to miss the most and he said his teammates because he likes how everyone helps and backs each other up. I guess this would qualify as that “proud dad moment” because it wasn’t about winning or losing for him, it wasn’t about hitting or throwing the ball the farthest or running the bases the fastest, he actually learned what I was hoping he would all along – the value of teamwork! He understood that in order for his team to be successful, he had to learn to trust and rely on his teammates to get the job done.

I just recently joined the team here at EXAIR and the thing that has stood out from day one is the focus on teamwork within the company. Being the “new guy” is always intimidating but the support and assistance I have received from everyone has been a refreshing experience. From the warehouse/shop personnel, to order entry/customer service, marketing, engineering up to management, everyone is willing to help each other.

 

This teamwork carries over to you – our customer. At EXAIR, we ALL understand to be successful we have to work together toward one common goal, satisfying our customer’s needs.

Visit our website to view our extensive product offering or contact an application engineer with your compressed air application.

Justin Nicholl
Application Engineer
JustinNicholl@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_JN

 

Image from rama_miguel. Creative Commons

Dead End Pressure

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

With all the warm weather and outdoor activities around the house the past few weeks I had somewhat forgotten about a nice wasp nest that had been constructed in between the front door to our house and my bedroom window.  This also happens to be right in the corner of two walls and in the deepest portion of the landscaping.   Like I said though, I had forgotten about it for a few weeks which gave the inhabitants enough time to double the size of the nest.

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With that being said, I didn’t want to use wasp or bee spray because it means I would have to get close to the nest and I have a strong belief that all of those products just make them really angry and don’t bring death right away.  I wanted the nest to have a quick death because then I don’t have to run around my yard, screaming, because I have a wasp chasing me after destroying their home.

I cam up with several methods to get rid of the nest.

1.) Brake Cleaner – Very effective, however the nest was also right above our air conditioning condenser so that was out.

2.) Small controlled burn – In my experience it is never small nor controlled.   Plus it was way to close to the dry roofline.

3.) 3,000 psi of water in a jet stream from the pressure washer.  WINNER!!!!

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So I set out to the front of the house with the pressure washer and hose in tow.  Get everything setup and notice that there is one sentry wasp sitting right at the entrance.  So I simply got the nozzle of the gun with pin point spray as close as I could and as soon as the wasp started to move I shot the entire nest off the house.   Then I proceeded to shoot it back and forth in the landscaping until I saw no survivors.

That was 3,000 psi of water that tore through a nest and rid my house of a pest.  This made me think of just how little pressure the human skin can take.  OSHA standard CFR 1910.242(b) guards against a mere 30 PSIG. Higher pressure air, when blocked up against our skin, has the potential to push air into our bloodstream and cause air embolism – a serious threat to our health. Too many commercial air nozzles and guns, open pipes and homemade blow off violate this OSHA standard and pose a threat to personnel.

EXAIR engineered air nozzles and products have been designed to eliminate the possibility of being dead-ended (blocked). This is why all of EXAIR’s products meet or exceed the OSHA standard 1910.242(b) for 30 psi dead-end pressure.  None of our products can be dead ended and cause bodily harm when used properly.  These engineered features also reduce noise levels and minimize air consumption. So if you are concerned with any of your compressed air applications, and just how safe they are, contact us.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF