Category: Customer Service

Basketball Season Has Come To An End

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

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
National Business Development Manager

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Saving Money with our Super Air Knives

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

Here at EXAIR we are confident that there is a lot to gain from using our products. Two of the biggest benefits of our Intelligent Compressed Air Products are a reduction in noise, and a reduction in Compressed Air usage. The latter will often lead to big money savings. Many times the savings our products offer will pay for the product itself! What is my Return on Investment going to be?

So, how do you calculate your ROI? The easy answer is that you don’t have to! You can use our Air Savings Calculator to calculate your savings for you. If you know your current air consumption (in SCFM), the new air consumption (SCFM) and the cost of the product, our calculator will turn that into monetary savings, as well as the calculated payback time in days.

Another option if you would rather not do the calculations yourself, is that you can send the item in question to our Efficiency Lab Testing. The Efficiency Lab Testing is a free service that we offer to show you the possible savings by switching to one of our products. We will calculate the savings for you and send you the results of our findings.
The final option – my favorite by the way – is that we can do the math right here:

For a simple example, I’m going to show the ROI of replacing a drilled copper pipe with an EXAIR Super Air Knife for a blowoff application. The calculations will be as follows:

Copper Pipe (1/4”): 3x 3/32” diameter drilled holes uses 9.4scfm per hole (28.2scfm total) at 80psig.

3” Super Air Knife: uses 8.7scfm at 80psig

Calculation:

For the yearly consumption, we need to find how many minutes in a year the blowoff will be operated:

For the Copper Pipe:

For 3” Super Air Knife

The difference between these two:

At this point, if you know your facilities cost to generate 1,000scf, you can use that to calculate how much you would save. For this example, we will use $0.25 to generate 1,000scf, which is used by the U.S. Department of Energy to estimate costs. This gives the following yearly savings:

With an investment of $273.00 (at the time of publishing), you can calculate the time it would take to pay off the unit:

From these numbers you can see that after 117 days, the 3” Super Air Knife will have paid for itself.

As you can see, it doesn’t have to take long for the knife to pay for itself, and then continue to contribute toward your bottom line. 

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

Send me an Email
Find us on the Web
Like us on Facebook
Twitter: @EXAIR_AW

Banner image by Peter Fertig from Pixabay

Special Line Vacs for Special Applications

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

EXAIR’s Line Vacs are a great option for replacing your ‘bucket and ladder‘ operation. There are many factors that need to be considered when selecting the best option – how far are you looking to convey? What conveyance rate are you looking to achieve? Is your material abrasive? – to name a few.
Using data we have gathered from our controlled in-house testing, we can almost always recommend a stock-option Line Vac that will meet your application’s needs.

There are some instances however, when your needs will be better met with a custom solution. In this blog I wanted to highlight a few custom Line Vacs that we have produced for customers in the past:

This Special Mini Line Vac was designed with barbed fittings (unlike the hose or threaded fittings) for easier installation for a manufacturer of integrated circuit chips. It was used to remove microscopic debris. The small body and high vacuum flow made it a perfect fit for the confined working space.


This 1 ½” Flanged Line Vac was designed using PVDF to provide a superior chemical resistance. In this case, the unit was going to be exposed to a chloride wash which would corrode all versions of steel, including stainless steel. The QF Flanges were also added to provide easy disassembly when the Line Vac was scheduled for cleaning.

This Special Flanged Line Vac was used to convey a measured granulated material into a pouch. The funnel side was loaded with the pre-measured material and pushed into a mesh pouch when the air was activated.


This Special Flanged Refumigation Line Vac was used to retrofit existing machinery to remove acidic vapors resulting from surface etching of a silicon wafer. Where this would typically be a nice fit for a Stainless Steel Air Amplifier, the existing exhaust piping was lengthy with many bends that would have caused back pressure on any Air Amplifiers. In this case, they needed additional force from the Line Vac to overcome this downstream resistance.

This Special Threaded 1″ Aluminum Line Vac was used to remove fumes from a welding application, and needed to be threaded into a flame retardant filter bag. The custom threads allowed them to screw the filter bag directly onto the line vac with the added insurance of a threaded connection to prevent sparks from escaping the bag.

As you can see, we have many examples of non-stock Line Vacs (as well as special items from other product lines). If you have an application you would like to discuss, feel free to give me a call!

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

Send me an Email
Find us on the Web
Like us on Facebook
Twitter: @EXAIR_AW

The Advantages of Heavy Duty Line Vacs

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

EXAIR‘s Line Vacs are a great option for replacing a ‘bucket and ladder’ operation when it comes to conveying bulk material. For most of these applications, the material being conveyed isn’t too heavy, nor is the distance too far. There are some applications where the parameters are a little more challenging. For cases like these, we have our Heavy Duty Line Vacs

Heavy Duty Line Vacs use compressed air to generate a vacuum with the Venturi effect.  Our unique design generates a high velocity airflow to create a powerful vacuum on the suction side.  Once the material reaches the throat area of the Line Vac, the compressed air will carry the product the rest of the conveying distance to the discharge. Where Heavy Duty sets itself apart from other models is through two key features:

Threaded Heavy Duty Family
  1. The Heavy Duty is made from a hardened alloy construction for increased abrasion resistance. This makes them ideal for materials like sand, ceramic, glass, garnet, tumbling media and steel shot.
  2. The Heavy Duty produces higher vacuum levels, allowing them to convey further, faster, or to convey heavier materials.

With models ranging from 3/4″ to 3″ OD, with either smooth bore or threaded connections, we have many options for many applications. If you would like to discuss if a Heavy Duty Line Vac is right for your conveyance application, give us a call!

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

Send me an Email
Find us on the Web
Like us on Facebook
Twitter: @EXAIR_AW