Author: Brian Farno

Application Engineering Manager with EXAIR Corporation. Father of three beautiful daughters and avid motorcycle enthusiast.

Amplifiers – Ours Go To Eleven

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1 – These go to 11

Once again, quoting and connecting to iconic pop culture movies from my younger years gets the best of me. If you have seen Spinal Tap, make sure you follow me on X, so we can connect and be friends. I’m sure you’ll like my posts just as much as my blogs. Well, the truth is, our amplifiers don’t go to eleven, they actually come in various sizes, and they aren’t made to just generate sound.

They are actually designed to take a small amount of compressed air and then entrain a large volume of free ambient air, combine them and force them out of the discharge side. They can be used to amplify the volume of air used to blowoff, cool or evacuate from an area. Tyler does a great job of showcasing just how fast they can cool a part when compared to a commercially available fan.

There is another type of “amplifier” in the compressed air field as well, the pressure booster is out there as well and we will sometimes get inquiries about this type of device. The trick is, these will increase your operating pressure. However, they cannot increase the volumetric flow of the compressed air.

The type of amplification they do is through orifice, valve, and even pistons to increase the the actual pressure of the system. The way our Air Amplifiers work is shown below. By using a patented shim on the Super Air Amplifiers and an engineered profile on both the Super and Adjustable Air Amplifiers we optimize the volume of air entrained on the low pressure side while maintaining a nominal size on the low pressure and the discharge side so ducting or tubing can be connected. The trick is that if you place your hand over the suction side or the positive displacement side it will actually just backfeed through the body. The units all meet or exceed the OSHA directive for dead end pressure because it can simply feed out the other side.

If you would like to discuss Air Amplifiers and where they may be able to help you reduce compressed air Consumptions or increase performance of an application, please contact an Application Engineer today.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

1 – These go to 11.mpg – pmw8000 – Retrieved from, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOO5S4vxi0o – published on 11/11/2011.

Double Dare, Double Dragon, Double Mint Gum

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1 -Classic Double Dragon Arcade Game from 1987! Spike & Hammer Save The World – This is the game I used to dump quarters in every visit to the mall.

It’s no secret, I’m a kid of the 80s. If you remember any of the three items in the title of this blog, then we may be able to be friends still, and I want to ask a question. How’s your sourdough starter doing? Okay, you got me, the blog isn’t going to be about sourdough, or one of my favorite TV shows from growing up, or the video game I always threw quarters into when we were allowed to spend some money at an arcade, but it’s going to be about Double Acting Reciprocating Air Compressors.

You may have heard from us about the many types of compressors before, and we would just like to make sure we have shared a few different viewpoints on these topics. The double acting compressor is a piston action compressor. Unlike the single action compressor, these will actually build pressure above and below the piston for each rise and fall, rather than just the rise. Because this generates twice as much air, these are generally found in larger sizes than the single acting compressors. This also means the compressor is constantly pushing a load out of the system whenever the motor is turning. While they do put more volume out and work with both directions of the piston, they have been found to only be around 32% more efficient than their single acting counterpart. Nonetheless, they are available in sizes that can supply an entire manufacturing facility and can be used efficiently when placed into a system that is designed correctly.

If you want to learn about more types of compressors, need help with your Konami cheat code, or what to discuss a point of use compressed air application, give us a call, chat, or email.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

1 – Classic Double Dragon Arcade Game from 1987! Spike & Hammer Save The World – Joe’s Classic Video Games – retrieved from – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SqYOHpUiDM

Erratic Performance And Simple Solutions

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If that’s not a vague title that would get you to click on the blog, then I’m not sure what is. The image definitely adds some context to what this may be about. Nearly one year ago I wrote a blog about tailored cooling solutions and industrial controls. It’s a fairly simple process that doesn’t require a lot of time and often results in some improved performance for electrical enclosures running cooler. Well, one of the keys to understanding how to do this is the basics of air movement and always starting at the top.

The 2017 Honda Pioneer 1000. Sitting nose in to the closest light we had before, we replaced batteries so we could easily see where to hook up the jumper pack.

This past weekend I took two of my daughters and one of their friends to some other friend’s property near Lake Cumberland, Kentucky. If you have a property like this with equipment like side by side or boat that isn’t used frequently, then you understand how easy it is for equipment to start acting up for no apparent reason. Even if you run a machine shop or company with excellent preventative maintenance, you know that sometimes, stuff happens and machines go offline. This past weekend, we had three of three machines go offline at the property. After some troubleshooting and repairs, we had 3 for three back up and running. The fun part for me is always the troubleshooting and discovery.

The first was the boat. I didn’t get any repair photos. It is a 150 HP out-drive motor that had fuel issues. We traced it to a fueling problem and after fresh fuel, fuel filter, new spark plug, swapping coils between locations, and swapping fuel injectors, we determined there must’ve been a clog in the fuel rail as it cleared up and ran great. That’s when the rain hit. So then we went on to the side by side. This beautiful machine right here was going into limp mode anytime you reached wide open throttle. One of two batteries was fairly weak and required jump-starting, so we started there, then it still did it. When working on the batteries, we did find a nice little mouse nest in the air pre-cleaner. That box has about a 2″ I.D. tube that runs from the front of the vehicle to just behind the front seats where the motor and air filter/box sit. After the battery didn’t solve the issue, we moved to the next basic issue; air and fuel. It had plenty of fresh fuel, so we started with air. When we removed the air filter, we found an entire 44 gallon trash bag that had essentially been vacuum formed into the air filter. We had two guesses. One was the mice, the other was that someone who previously owned it must’ve sat it in that 2″ tube when they were working on the vehicle to prevent anything from falling down it and over time it worked its way back to fully block the filter. Once that was removed, the machine ran tremendously better with no issues. So a simple lack of air movement took this performance machine to its knees.

The culprit… The 44 gallon bag was formed to the pleats of the air filter. Still in usable condition, needless to say, it went into the permanent trash container far away from the air intake.

That’s a lot like an air-to-air heat Exchanger with a filter that hasn’t been changed in a machine or production area full of floating air debris. I’ve seen spindle drives on CNC machines that had heat dissipation fins where you couldn’t see the fins, just a brick of oily soaked chips. This will cause drive failure in no time, just like the side by side, Lack of appropriate air movement took the machine offline and no fun was had.

If you want to look at a solution with no moving parts and that is extremely reliable, much like the fact we left the hood open, so the mice don’t feel so secure in that pre-filter area, contact an Application Engineer today to let us help you size your Cabinet Cooler System. Even if you want to use these as a fail-safe for your equipment.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Memorial Day 2024 – How I See It

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Happy Memorial Day! At face value, it is a holiday that most working class may get as a paid holiday and really gets associated with kicking off Summer. Pools open, barbecues are going in full force and, at least at my house, the grass needs to be cut at least twice a week. None of these things are the reason behind the holiday, and so I’d like to share just how I reflect on the day that is now known as Memorial Day.

This was a local Queen City Rucking Crew event put on by one of our retired Marine members to educate us and commemorate the Battle of Derna. This photo was taken at the halfway point at one of the local Marine Memorials here in Cincinnati.

Memorial Day started as Decoration Day and was established to decorate the war memorials and graves in order to honor those who paid the ultimate sacrifice while serving our country. The maternal side of my family has many members both active and retired in the many branches of our Armed Forces, and it was a tradition for my folks to take my sister, brother and I all out to our ancestors’ graves all throughout the Tri-State area and place flowers on all of them as well as flags on those that were military. There is only one relative that I am aware of who made the ultimate sacrifice, and that was during World War 1. When my Papaw (mother’s father) was alive, I could see on his face when we visited these memorials some of his past would come back. He was an ambulance driver in the Army during World War 2. He would share very little with us other than he saw a lot of things and would drive to the front lines in order to try and save his brothers in arms. Then, one of my uncles served in Vietnam with the Air Force, and he was a crew member for a while that would bring back those that paid the ultimate sacrifice. That was not something he liked to share as he said there were so many, and he had to see so much just through the act of transporting the fallen soldiers.

A lot of the events I have done all honor a historical event. This was before the event started, learning the background of the Battle of Derna

Flash forward to current day and, as I have mentioned before, I like to participate in GORUCK events which are cadre’d by current and retired Special Forces members. There are events where they will share stories about their brothers and sisters in arms who have fallen, so we often do their favorite exercise or some other movement in order to honor their memories.

While Cincinnati doesn’t have a desert like the soldiers had to hike through during their events, we do have plenty of stairs.

So while you are grilling, mowing, or just relaxing this weekend and thinking about how you can sleep in and relax on Monday, take a moment to look up a fallen soldiers’ history, maybe even one in your own family and pay respect to them through an act of kindness, doing something outside your comfort zone, or if you know their favorite exercise, push some limits and get out and workout. If you need someplace to start, check the Medal of Honor Recipient database, just pick a person and learn just a small portion of their story.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF