Enjoy Your Families, Friends and Time
Month: December 2016
Mini Cooler Cools Hot Glue Beads
A few weeks ago I worked with a nail and staple gun manufacturer on a glue cooling process involving their collated nail strips. To keep the nails together, they place a small amount of hot glue across the body of the nails and then have an open air line blowing compressed air on the glue to secure a good bond between the pieces. The current process used to work great, but they recently made a change to the type of glue they were using and now they are starting to see more rejects as the heat from the glue isn’t able to be removed quick enough with ambient air. The customer is familiar with EXAIR as they currently use some of our other products in various applications throughout their plant but in this particular case, they were unsure of the best product to fit their needs so they reached out for assistance.
For this particular application, I suggested the customer use our Mini Cooler. The Mini Cooler is specifically designed for small area or small part cooling applications. The Mini Cooler uses less compressed air than our Cold Gun but still produces the same 50°F temperature drop from the incoming supply air temperature. So say your plant air is 70°F, you would see 20°F air being exhausted from the unit. The device features a flexible hose, allowing the user to focus the cold air to the desired location, in this case right at the glue which would provide the quicker, more reliable solution the customer was needing. Installation is a breeze as well, thanks to the included magnetic base, you don’t need to make any expensive modifications or add any type of mounting brackets to the existing setup.
EXAIR offers a wide variety of spot cooling products that provide a low cost, maintenance free solution for large or small scale cooling processes. With help selecting the best product to fit your specific need or to discuss your particular application, please contact an application engineer for assistance.
Best Regards,
Justin Nicholl
Application Engineer
justinnicholl@exair.com
@EXAIR_JN
Nails image courtesy of Joy Kirr via Creative Commons license
High Temperature Capability
Last week, a customer called in to talk about their application. After aluminum and steel machining operations, parts are run through a washer system. The drying portion utilized a Super Air Amplifier to dry the sides and a Super Air Knife to dry off the top. The wash temperature was running at 185°F. The customer wanted to review the application and make sure the EXAIR products utilized in the process were rated to this temperature and to check on high the products could go, since the maximum possible temperature for the washer was listed as 250 °F.
The Super Air Amplifier is rated to 275°, above the maximum possible condition. The Super Air Knife was pre-installed with a stainless steel shim, enabling a maximum temperature rating of 400 °F. Both of the components are rated for temperatures in excess of the maximum possible washer temperature condition, and the customer felt confident with the system design.
EXAIR has several options in the Air Amplifier and Super Air Knife product families to allow for operation in high temperature applications. For the Air Amplifier, the Super Air Amplifier and Aluminum Adjustable Air Amplifier have a maximum temperature rating of 275°F. The Stainless Steel Adjustable Air Amplifier is rated to 400°F, and for the hottest of conditions, the High Temperature Air Amplifier is rated to 700°F.
Relating to Super Air Knife, the aluminum Super Air Knife is rated to 180°F. With a stainless steel shim installed, the maximum increases to 400°F. The PVDF Super Air Knife, used in applications where chemical resistance is needed, can withstand temperatures up to 275°F. And for the most extreme temperature environments, the Type 303 and Type 316 Stainless Steel Super Air Knives are rated up to 800°F.
To discuss your application and how an Air Amplifier and Super Air Knife or any EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Product can help your process, feel free to contact EXAIR and one of our Application Engineers can help you determine the best solution.
Brian Bergmann
Application Engineer
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Non-Contact Wiping with the Super Air Knife
A glove manufacturer needed to decrease the reject rate with their natural rubber gloves. They were seeing brush marks in the rubber material which was a visual defect. Their operation used a ceramic hand that was used to form the size of the glove. After the rubber material was applied, it was dipped into water to set the material. It would come out of the water tank, and a mechanism on the conveyor would rotate the hands to “shake” off the excess water. It would then go over brushes to wipe the water from in between the fingers. Much of the water had to be removed before it entered into the coagulation tank because it would affect the stretching ability of the glove. With their current operation, they were seeing the scuff marks from the brushes which was a visual defect. This cost them down time and product rejects. So, they contacted EXAIR to see if we could help.
In looking at their process, they had two conveyors running side by side with each other. This made it a bit more difficult as we could only work on one side. Being that the ceramic hand rotated around twice in 36” before hitting the brushes, I could focus in this area. When it comes to wiping products without touching it, air is required. And EXAIR knows how to use compressed air very efficiently, safely, and effectively. For this application, I suggested our model 110236 Super Air Knife kit. It has an overall length of 36” which could span the target area. It comes with a filter, regulator, and shim set to clean and control the air flow. It would be able to “wipe” the water off the hands like a non-contact squeegee. The air flow from the Super Air Knife will hug the exterior portion of the hand; removing the water from the surface and in between the fingers. They removed the brushes and did not have to worry about brush marks on the glove.
If you require a non-contact wiping in your application, use EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Products to accomplish this. You will not have to keep replacing items that wear or use items that cause damage to your product. EXAIR has the ability to use compressed air to create a strong force without scraping or scratching your material.
John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb