Month: October 2016

Additional Application Information Eases Your Mind – Find it Here

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

At EXAIR, we make a variety of products to coat, conserve, cool, convey, and clean. (What we like to call the 5 C’s.)  Within that realm, there are thousands of applications.  Companies are always looking to either fix, modify, create, or improve their processes by increasing speed, productivity, safety, or all of these.  And EXAIR products are designed to do this safely and efficiently.  In some cases, additional information can be very helpful for the transition to a different type of process.  This is where the EXAIR application data base comes into play.

A food processing company was using pecans to make a nutty coating. As part of their procedure, they would manually dump a 40 pound bag of pecans into a grinder.  The grinder would crush the nuts, and then a screw conveyor would move them to a mixing hopper.  The hopper for the grinder was about 4 feet off the ground, and it was designed with one step for the operator to get above the opening.  They would carry a bag to the hopper, place it on the step, step up next to the hopper, open the bag, and then dump it into the hopper.  They would do this about every half hour.  One day, the operator had a misstep during loading and fell. After injuring himself, the company decided to change their procedure to be safer.  They researched different types of conveyors for the food industry, and they came across EXAIR.

In speaking to them about their operation, they mentioned that they were not familiar with Air Operated Conveyors, or Line Vacs. They asked if EXAIR had sold any Line Vacs in the food industry and wondered if they could speak to any of our customers for referrals.   At EXAIR, we do not share contact information to past or present customers for privacy reasons.  But, I did explain that we do have many application details for every product group in our Application Database.  It describes the problems or situations, and how the EXAIR product was used to correct it.  I commended this company for doing their research.  The more information that you have, the easier a decision can be made.  The Application Database is available from our homepage, on the right hand side. Click the word “Applications”, register, and you can search the database.

home-page

 

If you need additional information to help support your ideas or to present to your manager, EXAIR has a wealth of knowledge that you can use in our Application Database. This customer was able to find much information in our Application guide to support our product’s use in their application.  It gave them confidence, and in the grander scheme, it made the work environment safe.  They purchased a model 6064 Air Operated Conveyor for his application.  This is a 2″ stainless steel Line Vac to move the pecans from the 40LB. bags to the hopper.  If you want to improve your processes, you can log into our Application Database to search our wealth of applications to get an idea of what has been done before.  If you do not find what you need, please contact us, and we can always help you with the information that you are looking for.

John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

Solving Special Application Needs with Special Solutions

Published on by Lee EvansLeave a comment
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A 6″ Full Flow Air Knife installed on a Soft Grip Safety Air Gun

Every application has its own unique needs and solution characteristics.  Most of the time, thankfully, we can meet those needs and solution requirements with our stock products and through discussions with our Application Engineers.  There are, however, a number of applications which need something more than what we have readily available on the shelf.  Sometimes those needs relate to a special Air Knife (no problem there), a special cold fraction preset on a Vortex Tube (no problem there, either), or even specially machined flanges designed to bolt into the application (again, no problem for EXAIR).

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This specialized solution provides exactly what the application requires

And then there are solutions like that which is shown above, comprised of stock products and off-the-shelf components, but assembled to meet a specific requirement of the application.  In this case, the customer needed the performance of an Air Knife, with the mobility of a Safety Air Gun.  The purpose of combining these two devices was to allow for wide area blowoff in a single pass, as opposed to multiple passes needed with a traditional setup.  And, with a little legwork on the backend in our engineering department, we created a specialized part number to meet this application need.

So, when this customer needed another solution to replicate this setup, they knew who to contact, and were certain that they would be able to find exactly what they need.

If you have an application in need of an application-specific solution, contact an EXAIR Application Engineer.  We’ll be happy to help.

Lee Evans
Application Engineer
LeeEvans@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_LE

Super Air Knife Helps Make More Candy Bars

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

It’s known in various places as Beggar’s Night, Trick-or-Treat, or just good old Halloween.  Whatever you call it, many of us have fond memories of donning a costume and a mask and roaming the neighborhood in search of candy.  Most of the grownups we encountered were only too happy to oblige our requests, in exchange for the opportunity to spend some time on the porch, enjoying a brisk autumn evening.  We won’t talk about the times when it may have rained, snowed, or been unseasonably hot…like, in the 80F range (yes, I grew up in Ohio.)

As fond as those childhood memories are, I’ve built a solid arsenal of grownup memories too, both passing out candy to neighborhood kids, and escorting my own kids around the neighborhood…of course, I always “suited up” for the occasion…

My neighbors breathed a collective sigh of relief when my sons became old enough to go Trick-or-Treating without Dad.
My neighbors breathed a collective sigh of relief when my sons became old enough to go Trick-or-Treating without Dad.

It’s probably no great secret that candy manufacturers ramp up their production in preparation for the occasion.  I had the pleasure of discussing an application with one of them recently – in fact, it was for some of the bite-size candy bars that they were about to be “Job One.”  This particular treat is produced as a continuous “strand” of nougat that is extruded onto a conveyor.  It’s then covered in peanut pieces and cut to size before being coated in chocolate.  Now, because these are bite-size bars, they’re making 3-4 times as many cuts as their regular candy bars (you know…the ones you got at the “cool houses?”) there’s 3-4 times as many peanut pieces on the belt.

To recover these pieces, they got a Model 110254 54″ Aluminum Super Air Knife Kit, and installed it to blow a light “curtain” of air across the belt in the area where the cutting takes place.  The excess pieces are blown into a trough on the side of the conveyor, where they’re cleanly and neatly recovered & recycled.  They only need about 5psig of compressed air supply pressure to do this, and it’s timed to the indexing of the belt, so not only is it reliable & effective, it’s just about as efficient as they can get.

The EXAIR Super Air Knife – quiet, efficient, and infinitely adjustable to meet the needs of most any blow off situation.

If you’d like to talk about Super Air Knives, Trick or Treating, or Halloween candy, give me a call.  I know a LOT about all of those things.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
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Ion Air Jet Keeps Sensor Lens Clean In Tablet Manufacturing Process

Published on by exaircorpLeave a comment

Last week I worked with a tablet manufacturer on a bottling application where they were having static issues in a key area of their process. After the tablets are made, they travel to a vibratory feeder where they are counted with a photo-eye sensor before moving to the bottling line. The problem was the vibration of the feeder was causing the tablets to contact each other which created powder, dust and a static charge that aided the dust settling on to the counting sensor lenses.

Over the course of the production cycle, as the dust built up, they were experiencing incorrect quantity counts. Keeping the sensor lenses clean was inconsistent and time consuming for personnel. They were also dispensing too many and too few tablets into the bottles. As a means to try to contain and capture the dust, they placed plexiglass over the feeder bowls and installed a vacuum head a few inches after the sensor but this only helped a little as the operators would still have to manually clean the sensor. Looking for a more reliable, “hands-free” solution, they contacted EXAIR for assistance.

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Example of a vibratory feeder bowl used for counting.

When dealing with small area cleaning applications, the Ion Air Jet is the ideal solution as it provides a high volume of focused, ionized airflow. By incorporating the Ion Air Jet into this particular process, the customer was able to effectively eliminate the static charge on the sensor, releasing the particulate and directing it towards the vacuum head to be carried away. I recommended they operate the unit at low pressure as a way to control the outlet velocity so they wouldn’t disrupt the tablets process or overwhelm the existing vacuum flow.

NEW Ion Air Jet
Ion Air Jet is a low cost, reliable device for effective spot cleaning.

EXAIR offers a wide variety of Static Eliminators for various industrial applications. With help selecting the right product to fit your specific needs or to discuss a particular application, please don’t hesitate to contact one of our application engineers for assistance.

Justin Nicholl
Application Engineer
justinnicholl@exair.com
@EXAIR_JN

 

Vibratory  Feeder for  screw counting image courtesy of Solarbotics via Creative Commons.