Author: Neal Raker

Adjustable Air Amplifier Transfers Plastic Bag Scrap

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Many times EXAIR products are used to help sort materials based on their weight or their density by providing a consistent force against a series of targets that should be of the same density or weight, but when they are not, the airflow can be “tuned” to remove the non-conforming parts.

aal-vacuum
Model 6042 Aluminum Adjustable Air Amplifier rejects empty pouches.

In this case, our customer (a packaging automation specialist) was working with a form fill and seal machine that was dedicated to making pouches 2” x 8” and filling them with a food product. In some cases, the pouches would not become filled with product and needed to be removed from the line. So, our customer devised a way to mount model 6042 2” Adjustable Air Amplifier along-side the travel of the pouches and set the input pressure and air gap setting to get optimum vacuum capture velocity to suck away empty ones and leave the full ones in-tact. Above you can see a photo that the customer took while mocking up the application at their facility. You can see the hose connected to the output to direct the empty pouches to a wire basket below.

A couple of things in this application made use of the Adjustable Air Amplifier the best choice. The first was the funnel-shaped suction area on the back side of the Adjustable Air Amplifier. This optimizes the Air Amplifier’s ability to draw in ambient air to propel it to the outlet. In doing this the un-filled, light-weight, plastic pouch becomes caught in the high velocity stream and thus gets carried away as desired. The second thing is that since compressed air is the source of power, the customer has infinite adjustability over the amount of suction force that they can apply to the pouch in the application. They can adjust the air gap opening on the Adjustable Air Amplifier to have a coarse adjustment of air consumption as well as vacuum level. Then, they have a finer adjustment that a pressure regulator can provide to really dial in the suction force as they need it to be for removal of the empties.

The idea here is that while Air Amplifiers are generally used for their output flow to cool targets and provide a significant Blowoff force, they can also be used to draw in not only smoke and fumes but also other lightweight items like the empty pouches above.

If you have a need to set up any kind of sorting process, maybe just to separate two different recycling streams or perhaps it is a need to perform a quality control function as shown above, think about EXAIR and our many solutions in this area.

Neal Raker, International Sales Manager
nealraker@exair.com
@EXAIR_NR

Adjustable Spot Cooler Keeps Band Saw Blade Cool

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flir image
Heat camera image of band saw blade heat

We run into interesting applications that require cooling all the time. Here’s an example of a spot cooling application for a tire cutting application that used a FLIR camera to show the heat generated within the band saw blade.

The customer is a world supplier of tires for various vehicles from ATV to construction use. And they have a need to cut tires up for quality control testing as well as R&D purposes. They were looking for a low cost and efficient way to cool the blade without using liquid coolant or water as those methods require implementation of waste handling schemes that this customer did not want to deal with. So, they came to EXAIR as they knew we specialized in cold air cooling products. Specifically, they had interest in model 3925 (Dual Point, Adjustable Spot Cooler System). The dual point hose kit would allow for even cooling on both sides of the band saw blade. After discussing their application details, we agreed that model 3925 would be the best offering we could make to the customer. As we have a band saw in our workshop, I located some rubber material that we had with similar properties to a tire and made some quick tests to determine that in fact, model 3925 allowed for only a modest 5°C rise in temperature. The customer was quite satisfied at our test result and purchased 4 units for their band saws.

Neal Raker, International Sales Manager
 nealraker@exair.com

@EXAIR_NR

 

Stainless Steel Super Air Knife Used in Mango Processing

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SS SAK mango
303 Stainless Super Air Knife in Mango de-watering process

Recently, I was working with a customer who specializes in post-harvest fruit processing. In this case, they were processing mangos from complete fruit down into cubes which are subsequently cleaned and packaged into plastic bags and then cardboard boxes for use in other food products.

When the customer contacted me, they were using a stainless steel pipe with holes drilled into it to de-water the fruit chunks after being sprayed to clean the individual pieces. They were using stainless steel pipe as they had a requirement for stainless steel construction due to being food grade facility. The problem with the pipe was that the airflow didn’t provide an even blowing force across the full, 30 inch width of the vibratory conveyor. The pipe solution also used quite a lot of compressed air. Unfortunately the customer could not measure what it was, but they gave me the number and size of the holes drilled into it. From that information, we could determine that they were using about 150 SCFM of compressed air at this one location.

And so, with the ineffectiveness of the pipe as well as the high air consumption, the customer went looking for something better. That’s when they found EXAIR Stainless Steel Super Air Knives on our web site. After some quick discussion to sort out the width of the conveyor and to establish what the need was, we settled on model 110030SS (30” 303 Stainless Steel Super Air Knife) to be mounted across the width of the conveyor (see photo above).

With the Super Air Knife installed, the customer was able to achieve the effectiveness he needed for the de-watering and at an airflow rate that was 42% less compressed air use than what he had before. Some of the other benefits that they were able to achieve without even being conscious of it were the enhanced safety of the OSHA compliant Super Air Knife and the sound level was cut dramatically as well.

EXAIR’s Super Air Knives are used many times in processing and packaging applications to provide a non-contact method for de-watering, blowing off dust, moving product off to one side, drying, ejecting and many more applications like these.

Neal Raker, International Sales Manager
nealraker@exair.com
@EXAIR_NR

 

E-vac and Vacuum Cups for Lifting Saw Cut Aluminum Bar Stock

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E-vac brick
E-vac and vacuum cups lift, large, heavy objects!

Our Chinese distributor had a customer who was producing the aluminum pieces that are formed into wheels for the automotive industry. Their process involved saw cutting large diameter, aluminum bar stock so it could be further processed.

The problem was once the parts were saw cut, they were slippery and difficult to handle. So, the customer was looking for a good way to handle these parts that was safe and effective for the operator as well. Our distributor offered the idea of using vacuum cups and an EXAIR E-vac for the project.

We determined that the aluminum raw stock that would be picked up would have an effective diameter of 254 mm on which vacuum cups could pick up the part for transfer. Also, the parts could weigh up to 45 kilos. So, we needed to find a vacuum cup (or cups) that could pick up that much weight with the surface area allotted to us. After reviewing our options, we came to the conclusions that (3) model 900759 vacuum cups would have a combined lifting capacity of 100 kilos when powered at -71 kPa vacuum. These vacuum cups have a 108 mm diameter and so can fit nicely in a triangular orientation on the saw cut area of the aluminum part.

Then came the part where we recommend which E-vac generator to use. We already calculated in our usual 2X safety factor for weight being lifted. So we are quite confident that the cups can do their job as long as sufficient vacuum could be maintained. We are lifting solid aluminum, so we know the material is non-porous. So, that’s the version of the E-vacs we will take into consideration for the project.

The part about determining which E-vac to recommend is not as clear cut and well defined as picking the vacuum cups is. So we must use our best judgement based on the weight of the item, the size and number of vacuum cups being used, and the surface finish of the material. Since the material will be somewhat on the heavy side and it would be a real problem if it were dropped, I recommended our distributor go with one E-vac vacuum generator per each vacuum cup. The vacuum generator I recommended was from the middle of the available models from a performance standpoint. That was model 810008M (8.4 SCFM Non-porous E-vac with straight through muffler). In this way, if one cup were to lose vacuum for whatever unforeseen reason, the other two could still support the full weight of the object as it is being lifted and moved.

Once the customer had their lifting fixture fabricated and the E-vacs with vacuum cups mounted, the lifting unit worked very well to address the customer’s concerns about worker productivity and safety.

E-vacs can be used for a variety of tasks, but lifting and placing applications tend to be the more prevalent ones. If you have a lifting or moving application of your own and think that vacuum technology might be useful, contact us with your questions. We thrive on helping folks like you solve such problems in industry.

Neal Raker, International Sales Manager
 nealraker@exair.com
@EXAIR_NR