Author: Neal Raker

Light Duty Line Vac Conveys the “Slugs” from a Die Punch Application

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At EXAIR, we get asked a lot of interesting questions about what our products can do. One of them that occurs with some frequency is, “Can your Line Vac convey slugs from a stamping operation?” The answer is usually yes as “slugs” (the material punched out of a sheet of stock to create a hole) are well suited in size, shape and weight to be conveyed effectively with the Line Vac product. We are used to this question from folks who are processing various types of metal sheet. The slugs tend to build up within their tooling and basically get in the way, if not even jam up the tooling from time to time. So getting rid of them from the process becomes a necessity that is, many times, not addressed during the tool making process.

Recently, we had another customer with this same kind of problem with foam. They were processing a foam sheet by punching a many holes in it which generated the waste stream you see above. Little pieces of foam about 8 – 10 mm in diameter and about 40 mm long. As you probably have guessed by now, the area that was set up to receive these renderings quickly became loaded full with the foam slugs. The customer needed to find a way to remove the slugs to a remote area so the receiving container could be switched out easily without stopping production. The original container was small, plastic bin about the size of a kitchen garbage can. The new receiving container was a large cardboard box that typically goes by the term Gaylord. The customer needed to set the Gaylord about 3 – 4 meters away from the die punching area. This is where the EXAIR model 130300 (3” Light Duty Line Vac) comes into play. The customer fabricated a chute that was positioned under the area to catch the slugs. The chute transitions to accept the 3” Light Duty Line Vac for connection at the bottom. Then, a 3” hose is connected to the output side of the Light Duty Line Vac so it could blow the slugs over to the Gaylord.

P1060775
Foam Slugs From Die Stamping Process

The customer chose the Light Duty Line Vac because it uses less air than a comparable size of our Standard Duty units. They didn’t need a tremendous amount of suction power due to the light-weight nature of the slugs. They also wanted a 3” unit to make sure none of the product would get caught anywhere within the conveying stream.

With the new Light Duty Line Vac installed, the operators do not have to spend as much time tending to the emptying of the previous, small containers that had to be used due to their size for fitting into the catch area. For an application where thousands of these slugs are produced in an hour, the productivity gain was significant. The customer didn’t place an exact value on the gain, but are considering this method for other, similar processes they have in the plant.

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

 

EXAIR Describes the Process of Static Eliminators

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4 R UMAX PL-II V1.4 [3]

 

One of our overseas distributors provides solutions for a customer who has bought quite a few of the Ion Air Guns for their production. The customer raised a question for which our distributor requested help to answer. The customer asked, “What exactly is going on in the process, when you blow ions on an item?” There is a large interest in these products and they are interested know more. It is not, that they are afraid of the procedure, they just wonder what physically happens, so my question to you is: Could you write an explanation on what happens within the static eliminating equipment when it is energized?

For the answer, you have to go back to high school science class to remember the definition of an ion. An ion is an an electrically charged atom or group of atoms formed by the loss or gain of one or more electrons. Put simply, it is an atom with either extra or fewer electrons than it is supposed to have normally. This excess or deficit of electrons makes the molecule attract electrically to atoms or molecules with the opposite charge. Too many electrons = negative charge. Too few = positive charge.

Gases can form ions as a result of an electrical charge. Gas ions are defined as such: one of the electrically charged particles formed in a gas by electric discharge or the like. The atoms we are creating with our static eliminators are oxygen ions or “ozone”. Due to the AC waveform of the electrical supply, the power supply generates 50 Hz signal that produces both positive and negative ions, depending on the phase of the electrical supply. In this way, our static eliminators produce ozone which can eliminate static of either polarity.

What happens at the atomic level is the ions we create are attracted to and combine with the electrostatic field present on material which has a static charge. The electrostatic field present on insulating materials is present because of two possibilities. Either there was some contact & separation of materials, friction (like rubbing a balloon on the hair), or there was a separation of two insulating materials which were previously in intimate (close) contact with one another (like peeling a protective film from a surface). When this happens, the electrons will move from one material surface to another based on their potential to gain or lose electrons (reference Triboelectric Series). The balance of the surface electrons becomes unbalanced as the electrons at the outer layers will be knocked out of their home orbit and take up with another atom to make it negative, thus leaving the previously neutral atom in a positive state.

When one applies a static eliminating ions from one of our products on to an application where static is causing a problem, they are providing those needed electrons to help the charged material balance itself out. The reason that it happens to insulating materials is because they cannot conduct an electrical signal and so the electrical charge remains on the surface until it is dissipated by active means like our static eliminators or by natural means (a much slower process) where air molecules floating around the charged surface will lower the overall charge to a point until it reaches a point of electrical balance. So, our ionizers (also known as static eliminators) simply speed that process up immensely and eliminate static charges in a fraction of a second. 

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

 

Tiny Engineered Nozzle Saves 91 SCFM for Engine Block Blow-Off

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Drilled pipe
Air Box with homemade nozzles

Above, you see a photo of what our customer calls an “air box”. It is aptly named as it consists of approximately 65 homemade nozzles, connected to a large plenum, which are able to be aimed in a variety of directions to blow out the numerous holes that are machined into the bottom of an aluminum engine block.

The engine (1024x621)
Engine Block with multiple holes to be blown out

Each of the nozzles above were hand-made for the air box fixture with an internal hole diameter of 1.6 mm. and which produced a force of about 50 grams with 6 BARG inlet pressure. The goal of reviewing the application was to see what if any EXAIR nozzles could replace these custom-made units to produce an air savings and thus cost savings for operating their fixture.

1108ss_profile
Model 1108SS Super Air Nozzle

After determining that the existing nozzles consumed 4.1 SCFM @ 6 BARG inlet pressure, I was able to make a comparison to the Super Air Nozzles that make up the smaller end of our flow range. In comparing these nozzles, I was able to determine that the Atto Super Air Nozzle, model 1108SS consumes 2.69 SCFM @ 6 BARG and produces 61 grams of force per nozzle.

The calculated air savings between the existing nozzle and the EXAIR Super Air Nozzle was about 34%. That’s a savings of 1.4 SCFM per nozzle. In terms of sheer air volume, that’s not a lot, BUT when you multiply that up over 65 nozzles, total air savings is 91 SCFM. That is close to saving the full output of a 25 HP air compressor!

And so, if you run out the cost to operate a 25 HP air compressor for a year’s worth of production, the savings becomes quite clear that by simply swapping out these homemade nozzles for an engineered solution with EXAIR Super Air Nozzles, the customer can achieve their goal for reduction in air use. Not to mention a significant reduction in the noise level for the application as well as enhanced safety with OSHA compliant nozzles.

Do you have a blowing application that could benefit from the same kind of simple, swapping of nozzles to bring your production costs down? Give us a call and let us know about your application. We would be happy to discuss with you and provide a similar comparison to determine how much air you could save!

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

So, How Much Does Your Compressed Air Cost you?

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Recently, I had a conversation with my German colleague regarding the cost of compressed air. He was scrutinizing what we say when we say that if you don’t know your cost, you can estimate using a value of $ .25 / 1000 Standard Cubic Feet of compressed air. When you crunch the numbers down to this kind of value, it becomes very easy to see what your new compressed air based solution might cost you or perhaps save you in terms of compressed air savings over the present method.  His opinion was that the rate that we use was a very inexpensive one and so he was looking for some verification.

The first thing I did was to go to trusty old Google and look up the average electricity cost for our state (Ohio) over the past year for a typical industrial electric consumer. The rate I found was $ .0687 / kWh. (Kilowatt hour)

If you take a 15 kW air compressor, this is equal to our rating of 20 HP (15,000 / 746 = 20.1 HP). 15 kW * $ .0687/ kWh = $ 1.03/ hour to operate a 15 kW (20 HP) compressor.

A 20 HP compressor of industrial grade will produce 80 SCFM. It takes 12.5 minutes for an 80 SCFM compressor to produce 1000 SCF of air.

12.5 minutes / 60 minutes = .208 hours to produce 1000 standard cubic feet of air.   .208 hours * $ 1.03 / hour = $ .2142 (21.4 cents) to produce 1000 Standard Cubic Feet
of air.

And so, in showing him my math, I was able to convince my friend that using $ .25 / 1000 SCF is actually a liberal figure in our area in some cases a conservative estimate. Of course our energy prices don’t compare to those in Germany / Europe. So, for him to make this kind of example to his customers would be an even more effective discussion for using our air saving Nozzles, Air Knives, Air Amplifiers and also our Optimization products such as the EFC.

Neal Raker,
Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com