Category: Air Amplifier

Pop or Soda?

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If you were asked the generic term for a sweetened carbonated beverage, what would you call it, soda, pop, or coke? Your answer would depend on where you live. People from the West Coast and Northeast would call it soda. Folks from the Midwest and Mountain areas call it pop. And folks in the South… ask for a Coke, no matter what they’re ordering. “I’ll have a coke”.  “What kind”.  ” Root beer please”.

coke or pop

As an application engineer, I have customers use terms for our products, while they are relevant to them, they really do not accurately tag the product. For example, someone will call in and ask for an EXAIR. While EXAIR is our company name, it is not the name of any one of our thousands of part numbers.

Over my 18 years with EXAIR, I have learned to translate ambiguous product descriptions and direct the customer to the correct item. I am not alone. The other application engineers on the team can do the same. If not they will consult with the rest of us. Expertise in fluid power is our hallmark and what positions us a leader in Intelligent Compressed Air® products for industry.

Need help? Click the Live Chat icon in the upper left to connect with one of our engineers. Or you call 1-800-903-9247 and ask to speak with an application engineer.

Joe Panfalone

Application Engineer

Phone (513) 671-3322
Fax (513) 671-3363
Web:  www.exair.com
Twitter:  www.twitter.com/exair_jp
Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/exair

The Evolution of the Nozzle

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In the beginning, when hearing and energy conservation were not a consideration, simple open pipes were used for blow off operations. These are a waste of compressed air, dangerously loud, and potentially injurious. Federal regulations have since been implemented requiring hearing protection from exposure  to sound levels 90 dBA over a period of  8 hours or greater. It also mandates that if an orifice be dead ended against the skin it would not exhibit more than 30 psi.

safety nozzle

Safety Nozzle

Thirty years ago, EXAIR got its start making a more efficient nozzle that was O.S.H.A. compliant. The design sheltered the main air orifice down in a milled groove. The secondary orifice is an annular opening. This provides two functions. By chance if someone could find a way to block the main orifice, there is a secondary path for air to flow. The annular orifice also develops a tube of air surrounding the high velocity main air flow. This interaction deadens the sound level as well as creating a vacuum to draw in surrounding air.

Air Jet

air jet

The next step in the evolution is an air jet which utilizes the coanda effect which is the phenomenon where high velocity air will adhere to a surface. Compressed air is injected through an annular orifice at sonic velocity. The injected air is directed toward the output and creates a vacuum on the opposite end. This vacuum pulls in large volumes of free air and results in a larger volume of air on to the target. If one end or the other is blocked, flow simply reverses at well below OSHA dead ended pressure requirements.

Air Amplifier

air ampSimilar in design concept but in larger configurations is the air amplifier.  They move massive amounts of air which makes them an ideal solution for cooling, ventilating, and for blow off. Two styles were developed. An adjustable style were the annular orifice can manually be adjusted to control air flow and force. The second design has a fixed flow where the annular orifice is established with a patented shim.

Super Air Nozzle

nozzle

The more recent improvement on the safety nozzle is the Super Air Nozzle. The design concept here is to embed the orifices between fins around the perimeter of the nozzle. This prevents blockage by providing a path fore and aft for air to escape and remain below the OSHA dead end pressure threshold.  The high velocity air also creates a low pressure area drawing in up to 25 times in volume of surrounding ambient air than the volume of compressed air consumed. Sound levels are also greatly reduced.

EXAIR is not done exploring new and improved compressed air products. Product design is customer driven so we welcome your feedback.

Joe Panfalone
Application Engineer
Phone (513) 671-3322
Fax (513) 671-3363
Web: http://www.exair.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/exair_jp
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/exair

If It’s Not Broke…Or Even If It Is…How Bad Is It?

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

I currently drive a 12-year-old minivan. I’ve been pretty good about keeping up with the preventive maintenance on it, and aside from a little rust on the fenders and stains in the carpet, it’s not too much worse for the wear. In fact, it’s going to have to get a whole lot worse to make me consider a monthly car payment again.

The only real repair issue I’m facing with it right now is a seal leak on the power steering rack & pinion. Although it’s a very slow leak, I’m well aware that it’s probably not going to fix itself. In fact, I know for sure that it’s going to get worse, and the day is coming when I’ll have to do something about it. The last time I changed the oil, I surveyed the situation, and it looks to be a fairly involved repair. For me, anyway…on a scale of 1-10, changing the oil is about an 8 for me. I estimate the seal job as a 13.

Again, though, it’s still a small leak: I’m going through a $3 bottle of power steering fluid every month or so, pouring a few ounces in the reservoir every time I stop to fill the gas tank. It’s another example of something that’s going to have to get a whole lot worse to make me consider the alternative.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with an engineer at a large power tool manufacturing company over the course of the last two years…he’s been replacing open-end blow offs (mostly made by crushing the ends of copper tubing) with 3” Aluminum Super Air Knives throughout their plant…and realizing significant savings in compressed air consumption. In a couple of situations, he’s saving even more air by using an EFC Electronic Flow Control, when they can get away with intermittent blow offs.

There are a couple of production lines, though, where he hasn’t been able to justify the use of the Super Air Knives…these are locations where only one crimped tube is run, and the parts are so small & lightweight that they can only use very low compressed air supply pressure. In those cases, we’ve both done the math, not only on the Super Air Knives, but Air Amplifiers and Super Air Nozzles, and the numbers just don’t bear out much benefit from replacement. And that’s OK: it’s just as important to know where our products aren’t going to work out as it is to know where they will.

I guess the bottom line is this: we don’t need to finagle our products into situations where they’re not needed.  We, and EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Product users everywhere, are doing just fine (better than that, even) by putting them in applications where they’re making a HUGE difference. Give me a call if you want to find out how much we can improve your compressed air applications. I’d love to find out myself!

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
(513)671-3322 local
(800)923-9247 toll free
(513)671-3363 fax
Web: http://www.exair.com
Blog: http://blog.exair.com/
Twitter: twitter.com/exair_rb
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/exair

Choices, Choices

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

This past Sunday was my birthday. I had planned on teaching my 13-year-old son some basics of pitching…but it rained, so instead, he got a lesson in the basics of plumbing, since the toilet in his bathroom needed a new wax ring installed. It actually wasn’t too bad, since I learned something too: I’ve replaced a few toilet seals in my time, but I never knew how easy it was when help was available, especially from a strapping, athletic teenager who’s capable of lifting his half of that awkward, ceramic hulk. When we go to tile that bathroom floor (don’t tell him yet; it’s a surprise…maybe for HIS birthday), this is one task I don’t dread all that much anymore.

You’re probably thinking of a thousand better ways to spend a birthday, and, a thousand times, you would be right. It wasn’t all bad, though: right before we got into the plumbing project, we had lunch with some of our best friends. Since it was my birthday, I got to choose where we went. After making several fast-food suggestions that I KNEW would be unacceptable to my wife, I picked one of her favorite steak joints, and all was well. Medium well, actually…

Speaking of smart decisions, I had the pleasure of helping a new customer with product selection for a cooling application yesterday. There are many, many situations where an EXAIR product can be used for cooling, but it all comes down to two considerations. Is it better to use:

*A small-to-moderate flow of very cold air (like a Vortex Tube), or
*A high volume flow of ambient temperature air?

In this case, they needed to keep a sensitive component in a vision inspection system relatively cool in a very high temperature environment. For that kind of mass heat removal, the obvious answer was an Air Amplifier:  although a Vortex Tube can produce very cold temperatures, when the temperature of the machinery is more than a few hundred degrees, the relative “cool” of room temperature air will do just fine, especially if you can provide a LOT of it.  What (I hope) sells the customer on it is a video we recently became aware of, showing our Adjustable Air Amplifiers being used to cool the exhaust during the testing of the 2014 Corvette’s 450HP V8 engine:

If you have an application requiring a cooling flow of air and aren’t sure which way to go, give me a call. If the Corvette engine video doesn’t convince you, we can even resort to quantitative analysis of your heat load, which is almost as fun. Almost…

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
(513)671-3322 local
(800)923-9247 toll free
(513)671-3363 fax
Web: http://www.exair.com
Blog: http://blog.exair.com/
Twitter: twitter.com/exair_rb
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/exair