Author: Brian Farno

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

15 Years – Comfort Crisis or Continued Challenge?

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According to the Department of Labor, the average tenure for an employee in manufacturing is currently at 4.9 years. This number has consistently declined since 2014 as seen in the image below. This is not new information. I still remember when I was interviewing at EXAIR, the next tenure Application Engineer had been here for 12 years. That was in 2010. That made me believe that EXAIR treats its employees well and that people are happy to stay. I was drawn to this because I came from a family where my parents both worked for the same Steel Mill for over 35 years. Seeing a company that had an average tenure in the department I was going to join, sitting at 15 years, was at the top of my list.

1 – Median Employee Tenure Within Industries

At the same time, I was leaving a job I had been in for 5 years and was still learning consistently, just the economy was dropping out, and the industry was struggling. Would I be happy working in an office with this crew? I wasn’t afraid of being a young person and not knowing anything, I was confident I could learn. Well, flash forward through several years of constant learning, and now I am the most experienced Application Engineer. We have had some retirements and then lots of promotions leading up to this point. The one constant has been that I have always had new products, processes, or aspects of EXAIR and the compressed air industry to learn.

I mentioned the comfort crisis in the title because a lot of people I talk to ask me if I stay at EXAIR because I am comfortable. In all honesty, there has been a constant source of growth since I started. Whether it be our continuous product expansions forcing me to learn new materials. Obtaining my MBA from NKU to better understand the business side of EXAIR over the technical side of our products. Taking on different roles or contributing to new processes. Even up to the latest partnership with BETE Fog Nozzles, nowhere in the 15 years has there been a full month of pure comfort.

No one knows where the future will take us. All I can say is that I have been very blessed to make it this far and the future is looking even more exciting than the past. So tune in and stay with me, no matter where you go, let’s see where this ride goes.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

1 – Median Employee Tenure Within Industries – US Bureau of Labor Statistics – Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.t05.htm

Basketball Season Has Come To An End

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This past weekend was one filled with many emotions in the Farno household. It was the tournament weekend for my youngest daughter’s basketball team, which I was the assistant coach for. This was our second season as a team, and we still had to learn a new dynamic this season because we added a player, and we were bumped up in our league after a strong performance in the tournament last year.

With that, came a season that did not have as many wins when you look at our record. You wouldn’t know it because of how these girls played for the full season though. Not once did we have a girl want to quit or mention that they weren’t good because we were losing. This is due to the families of our teams believing in them and our coaching position and style. Our head coach continually pushed these girls that wins and losses happen. Is it fun to win? Yes, is it fun to lose? No. What can we do about it when we lose? We can evaluate what went well, what didn’t and did we improve over the last time we stepped on the court. We didn’t sugarcoat every loss, we also didn’t tear down and focus only on the negative. Instead, we worked on skills and then we worked on their mental perseverance. When they would get out hustled or when fouls didn’t seem to get evenly called, we would remind them and ourselves that there are only two things they can control. Their attitude and their effort.

The standings shown here won’t matter past this weekend and that is something that is hard to convey to a 10-year-old.

When a player was getting upset, whether based on their mistakes or another factor, like an aggressive player on the other team, we simply reminded them of the tools they are equipped with and that all they can change is their attitude and effort on the matter. We would point out these skills they had forgotten they had in the moment. This wasn’t always easy, and we weren’t always perfect at doing it by any means. At one point in the season, we had a therapy session during practice and went through each player to tell them how we have seen them grow this year and what they should be proud of. This was just as much for their self-confidence as it was for our own.

As the assistant coach of the team, I really try to run support for the head coach and make sure our subs are ready. If a player during the game has a question or issue, I try to handle it. During practices, I would act as a defender, or just support whatever the coach was trying to teach. I distributed a lot of band-aids and several instant ice packs. I also tried to always encourage them on the wins that I saw while they were on the court. The fact of the matter was, I was there as support for the entire team and I would always try to look forward to seeing what was going to be needed and anticipating what I would need to do, whether it was a parent volunteer for a scorekeeper, a concussion check for the girl that just got hip-checked to the floor, or a high five for the girl that just made her first shot of the game, or the one that missed hers. No matter what, I tried to be prepared and anticipate what was coming. Sometimes this worked, other times it didn’t. How does this connect to EXAIR?

Early one morning, I got to use a ride-on floor scrubber to try and mop the gym. The sun coming in, and the peaceful situation really made me appreciate my situation.

Well, I do the same thing in my role as an Application Engineer. When someone contacts us with a blowoff need or a static electricity issue in their process, I immediately go to work trying to connect the dots in my wild mind to what they need and how fast can we get this obstacle conquered together. If a customer has a product that isn’t quite working right, I start the process of what could have gone wrong, and I try to be methodical in my process of troubleshooting. This all comes from experience and I have been doing this for 15 years now. I never thought I would be an assistant basketball coach since the last time I played was in 6th grade. Well, I also never thought I would be a Certified Compressed Air System Specialist, yet here I am, because there was a need and I filled the need that was presented to me, just like the girls on this basketball team did.

By no means do I get every single product selection, or assistant coaching task right. By no means am I perfect, and I don’t claim to be. I do, however, try to make sure my attitude is focused on achieving the task at hand, whether it be helping a player set a good pick or a customer select the right vacuum, then I make sure I exert the effort needed to get the answers and solutions that both sides need.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Static and Variance

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Okay, folks, it is time we seriously discuss how dry it is here in the MidWest right now and how much static there is anywhere we go. The dry air is the lack of moisture due to heat being used inside facilities, and thus, the static ramps up. If you didn’t understand much of those statements then it is okay, we have a whitepaper that covers the basics. The seriousness of the static in my home has reached critical mass. We are past the funny shocks and hair standing on the end humor side of static. We have reached a critical mass where it is no longer funny, my coffee is being affected by the ambient level of static charge.

That’s right, the coffee grinder I received for Christmas is riddled with static. Now, it is still functioning, thank goodness for that. The container that houses the fresh ground, the nectar of the gods making crushed beans, is made of polycarbonate material and is prime to hold a static charge. As the dry coffee beans are ground into obliteration there is a tremendous amount of friction which causes a very high charge on the ground bean discharge that goes into a very dry non-conductive container. This means the grinds all pile up and then also cling to every single surface on the interior of the small container. That’s fine, it still does not affect the performance of the grinder. Then, when I open the lid there is a detachment that happens and a small amount of that highly charged ground bean will start to dance all over the surfaces of the container, including outside of it and onto the counter. The end result is I have to constantly wipe up coffee grinds and I am wasting the grinds that give me the caffeine I intend to consume.

The dilemma here is that I don’t want to run compressed air into my kitchen, already have one project going on in the house. Secondly, my wife would not think it would be as entertaining as I would. So, I need a non-compressed air-assisted static eliminator that can plug straight into a voltage available here in the US, and let’s face it, coffee is a global consumption so 120 VAC and 230 VAC would be preferred. Enter, the VariStat Benchtop Ionizer.

The Varistat would easily mount to the wall over my coffee generation station and could be adjusted from a gentle breeze to where it doesn’t disturb the coffee grinds all the way up to a forceful blast in case the need would arise. I could also vary the balance of the unit to meet the atmospheric and surface conditions of the container.

Okay, so I’m probably not going to buy a Varistat Benchtop Ionizer and mount it to my kitchen wall. I would easily recommend it to any kind of hopper loader or regrind operation where the static is causing the materials to cling to the containers or causing nuisance shocks. This unit is easily sat on a bench top or mounted to a wall or ceiling over a hopper or workstation. Thanks to the operation of standard 120 VAC or 230 VAC it can function nearly anywhere in the world that has electricity.

If you would like to discuss coffee, what my favorite roasts are, or more importantly how can we make this work in our building, just let me know if you have some questions and we will get back to you quickly.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Video Blog: The Effects of Back Pressure On A Vortex Tube

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The video below is one that I have explained to customers countless times over my tenure here at EXAIR. Vortex Tubes are most efficient when discharging the cold and hot air streams into atmospheric conditions. This video is my attempt to showcase just how much it will affect your performance when a restriction on the discharge cannot be avoided.

If you would like to discuss Vortex Tubes and their feasibility in your application, feel free to contact an Application Engineer today!

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF