The Gen4 Super Ion Air Knife is a powerful static eliminator that prevents jamming, tearing, shocks and dust build up by neutralizing static and blowing away the debris.
They combine the quiet and efficient Super Air Knife with the compact design of the rugged Gen4 Ionizing Bar resulting in a total solution to remove static electricity from plastics, webs, sheet stock and other product surfaces. Removing the static helps reduce or eliminate the process issues that the static electric causes, allowing for greater production speeds, improved product quality and a cleaner product. Some of the issues static causes include, dirt and dust buildup on surfaces, misreads for sensors, poor quality from ink jets, poor print quality on printed surfaces, and personnel getting shocked.
The Gen4 Super Ion Air Knife floods an area or surface with static eliminating ions. With a uniform airflow across its length, misalignment to critical surfaces like webs is avoided. The force can be adjusted from a light breeze, to a full out blast of air. The Gen4 Super Ion Air Knife is electrically powered, is shockless and has no moving parts.
How It Works
How The Gen4 Super Ion Air Knife Works
In the diagram above, compressed air flows through an inlet (1) into the plenum chamber of the Gen4 Super Ion Air Knife. The flow is directed to a precise, slotted orifice. As the primary airflow exits, it creates a uniform sheet of air across the entire length, pulling in in surrounding air (2). An electrically powered Gen4 Ionizing Bar (3) fills the curtain of air with positive and negative charges. The air stream delivers the static eliminating ions to the product surface (4) where it instantly neutralizes static and cleans off dust and other particulates.
The Gen4 Super Ion Air Knives are powerful tools, and very quickly dissipates 5kV of static even at low compressed air supply pressures. At 5 PSIG, only 3.7 SCFM (0.3 BAR, only 105 SLPM) of compressed air per foot of length is required!! Sound levels are also very low, resulting in quiet operation.
Added Features –
Compressed Air Inlets are provided on each end and the bottom of the Super Air Knife
Thicker shims can be installed easily if more force is needed.
Emitter points are durable stainless steel
The high voltage cable is armored to resist cuts and abrasion, and has integral grounding. Threaded bayonet connector is fully assembled and ready to use
Gen4 Ionizing Bars and Power Supplies are UL Component Recognized to U.S and Canadian safety standards and are CE and RoHS compliant
Power Supplies are 115/230 VAC selectable and come with 2 or 4 outlets
Standard lengths from 3″ to 108″ (76mm to 2743mm) are offered, and custom lengths are available to meet your process needs
Successful applications include web cleaning, pre-paint dust removal, shrink wrapper machinery, printing equipment, package cleaning,and bag opening/filling operations.
If you have questions about Gen4 Super Ion Air Knives, other types of Static Elimination products, or any of the 16 different EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air® Product lines, feel free to contact EXAIR and myself or any of our Application Engineers can help you determine the best solution.
This time of year, we begin to field a variety of calls from customers experiencing issues with static electricity in their processes. You may be familiar with the rather unpleasant shock you receive after walking across a carpeted surface and touching a door knob. This “zap” of electricity is a result of fast-moving electrons leaping from your body to the door knob, or vice versa. As your feet shuffle across the surface of a rug or carpet, your body either gains or loses electrons. Touching a conductive surface then causes these electrons to leap from one place to another.
If you notice, this happens to occur much more often during colder winter months (if you’re one of those fortunate to live outside of this sensation we call “cold” please don’t rub it in!). The reason that you experience static shocks more frequently during winter is due to the relative humidity. At colder temperatures, air does not hold as much moisture as it does when it’s warm. Even though you’re heating your house to a similar temperature, the air that is being drawn into your home and heated is still the dry cold air containing less moisture.
The amount of moisture in the air is expressed as relative humidity. This value is given as a percentage of water vapor in the air, compared to how much it could hold at that temperature. In conditions of lower relative humidity, static charges build up much easier. When the relative humidity is high, there’s a higher concentration of water molecules present in the air. These water molecules “coat” the surface of the material, allowing electrons to move more freely and form a layer over the material. This layer of water molecules acts like a lubricant, reducing the forces that cause static to generate. There are many applications that static may only pose an issue once the climate changes.
I recently worked with a customer that was experiencing static problems in one of their labeling processes. During the summer, they weren’t having any issues as the residual humidity in the air kept static at bay. However, as temperatures and the humidity dropped, static was building up on their labels causing the automatic labeler to periodically jam.
The machine was jamming almost 1x/hour and they run two shifts per day. With each jam taking approximately 10 minutes to fix and get back up and running, they were losing over 2.5 hours of production time per day just fixing the labeler.
The solution was simple. Two Model 112006 Super Ion Air Knives were installed just prior to where the labels come into contact with the bottle: one on the top side of the label, and one on the underside. The static neutralizing ions were able to contact both the bottle and the label, ensuring that both surfaces were no longer carrying any residual charges and immediately stopped the issue with labels jamming. This stopped them from wasting valuable production time fixing an issue and allowed them to run continuously without interruption.
This is a common situation we see across a number of different industries. A static issue disappears during the warmer summer months and comes back each winter once the humidity drops. Don’t let these recurring issues continue to cause problems for you in your processes. CallEXAIR today, we have our full line of Static Eliminators in stock and ready to ship.
Tyler Daniel Application Engineer E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com Twitter: @EXAIR_TD
Instrument calibration is a big deal in a number of situations. Companies that sell product by weight are (or should be) adamant about keeping their scales calibrated. If they read light, they’re giving unintended discounts. If they’re reading heavy, they’re gouging their customers, and their local Weights & Measures folks take a dim view of that.
A much more serious situation, involving errant instrument readings, took place on a U.S. Navy submarine, USS Greenling (SSN-614) in the spring of 1973. They were conducting tests on a firing a new torpedo that was specifically designed for greater depths. While operating at what they THOUGHT was the ship’s “test depth” – the point at which the designers say the hull can be expected to maintain reliable integrity – the Captain, who was in the Torpedo Room, noticed a pressure gauge on a torpedo tube showed a higher-than-expected reading. They quickly realized the depth gauge in the Control Room was not operating properly, and they were, in fact, alarmingly close to “crush depth” – which is exactly as bad as it sounds. That’s a story every submariner hears early in their career, and it’s the reason that instrument calibration (for ALL systems…not just the depth gauges) is taken QUITE seriously.
In certain industrial and commercial ventures, instrument calibration is critical in that same vein: atmospheric monitoring equipment needs to be accurate or people can be poisoned by toxic gases, or suffocated from lack of oxygen, for example. Other processes aren’t life-threatening, but can have major impacts on production and quality. One of these (and the main subject of this blog) is the ability to measure static charge.
EXAIR’s Model 7905 Digital Static Meter is a handheld instrument that quickly & accurately indicates the static charge that resides on an object’s or material’s surface. If it’s in proper calibration, it can be used to gauge the effectiveness and efficiency of static eliminators, by measuring the static charge before, and after, exposure to the static eliminator product. It can also help to identify the source of static charge by showing specifically where the highest charge resides on an object or piece of material.
EXAIR Model 7905 Digital Static Meter: Because you can’t manage what you don’t measure.
To do so accurately, though, it has to be maintained in good working order. To ensure this, EXAIR Corporation offers calibration service, available at three levels, depending on your specific needs.
Level 1 Calibration is performed in accordance with Mil Std 45662A, and is traceable to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) standards. It doesn’t include before/after test data, but does ensure the Static Meter is in good working order and reads accurately. For most typical industrial applications, this is all that’s required.
Level 2 Calibration complies with Mil Std 45662A, and is traceable to NIST standards as well. It DOES include before/after test results and lists the laboratory standards used (along with NIST test numbers), which may be called for in compliance with your company’s quality programs.
Level 3 Calibration also complies with Mil Std 45662A and is traceable to NIST standards. This level of calibration, however, is performed by an independent laboratory that is accredited for ISO 17025 compliance. The calibration certificate issued satisfies requirements of:
Mil Std 45662A
ANSI/NCSL Z540-1
ISO/IEC Guide 25
ISO/IEC 17025
If you don’t recognize any of those requirements, Level 1 Calibration is likely all you need to ensure your Static Meter is functioning properly. A prime example of the need for Level 3 Calibration might be a pharmaceutical goods manufacturer who uses Static Eliminators to ensure cleanliness/sanitation in a packaging evolution, and uses the Static Meter to periodically document the dissipation of the static charge on the packaging material. The before/after results, along with compliance to certain standards, could trigger a safety recall on a potentially unsafe product that presented a very real public health risk.
Prime examples of applications where your Static Meter might need different levels of calibration (from left to right) – an artwork maker using a Gen4 Ion Air Gun can ensure consistency in finished products by periodically having their Static Meter calibrated to Level 1 standards. A playing card manufacturer who uses Gen4 Ionizing Points and sells product to casinos can provide quality documentation to their customers with Static Meters calibrated to Level 2 standards. A pharmaceutical company who uses a Gen4 Ion Air Jet can track quality – and hence public safety – by documenting compliance with the highest levels of regulatory control with Static Meters calibrated to Level 3 standards.
As temperatures drop in the Northern Hemisphere, static charge – and attention to the problems it causes – rises. If you’ve got questions about static elimination, let’s talk.
Russ Bowman, CCASS
Application Engineer EXAIR Corporation Visit us on the Web Follow me on Twitter Like us on Facebook
As the weather starts to change and the colder dryer months turn from autumn to winter, static electricity can become a real nuisance. Machines will start jamming, alignments will be difficult, dirt will collect to surfaces, and hazardous sparks can shock personnel. EXAIR manufactures a line of Gen4 Static Eliminators, also called ionizers, to remove these nuisances.
Static is generated from non-conductive surfaces being “rubbed”. This could be caused from going over rollers on a conveyor, stacking product onto each other, sheet feeding, and even peeling away a backing material. When a non-conductive surface, or insulator, is moved or separated, electrons are “stripped” and redistribute into different areas on the surface. Static charges are typically measured in kilovolts (kV), 1 kV = 1,000 volts, and they can be either positive or negative in nature. The higher the charge, the stronger the static force. At a 10 kV static charge, a spark can jump one inch (25 mm) from the surface. You probably felt that shock when working with plastic or non-conductive materials. EXAIR has a Digital Static Meter to measure the amount of static voltage on a surface. It is a great tool for finding problem areas in your process as well as determining the effectiveness of the treatment.
Model 7905 Digital Static Meter
Static electricity is dynamic. The more you rub or move the material, the higher the static charges can form. Static can also regenerate itself after the charges have been removed. With higher static charges, the attraction force to other materials is much stronger. This attraction could be to other products, dust, lint, and even you. A negative effect of static can be seen with dirty surfaces, tearing, misalignment, jamming and shock to personnel. The EXAIR Gen4 Static Eliminators are engineered to remove both negative and positive static charges in an assortment of designs to best fit the application.
EXAIR manufactures eight different product lines in two different styles, Gen4 Static Eliminators with Air and Gen4 Static Eliminators without Air. These ionizers are powered by a 5,000V AC power supply. The alternating current, AC, will create both negative ions and positive ions. The result is no matter if the static charge you want to eliminate is positive or negative on a surface, the Gen4 Static Eliminators will be able to remove it. The power supplies come in either a 2 port or 4 port design; so, you can power multiple Gen4 Static Eliminators with one power supply. The input power is selectable from either 115Vac or 230Vac in both 50/60 hz. An armored and electromagnetic shielded cable connects the power supply to the ionizer in a single wire design. This will help to protect the cable from abrasions, cuts and splits in industrial areas. The Gen4 Static Eliminators have a shockless design, and are UL Component Recognized and CE compliant. I will give a brief description of each product that utilizes this rugged design for optimal static neutralization.
Gen4 Static Eliminators with Air:
Gen4 Super Ion Air Knife
Gen4 Super Ion Air Knife: This product has the best compressed air efficiency in removing static by combining the Super Air Knife with an Ionizing Bar. The Gen4 Super Ion Air Knife has a 40:1 amplification ratio and uses the laminar air flow to carry the positive and negative ions to the surface. The laminar flow allows for a quick static discharge in fast conveyance speeds. They can also remove static from surfaces up to 20 feet (6.1 meters) away. EXAIR manufactures stock lengths from 3” (76mm) to 108” (2.74 meters). Some typical applications for the Gen4 Super Ion Air Knife are found in web cleaning, sheeters, pre-paint dust removal, and shrink wrappers.
Gen4 Standard Ion Air Knife
Gen4 Standard Ion Air Knife: Similar to the Gen4 Super Ion Air Knife, this product has a good compressed air efficiency. It utilizes the Coanda effect to draw in ambient air at a 30:1 amplification ratio. They come in stocked lengths from 3” (76mm) to 48” (1.22 meters). The Gen4 Standard Ion Air Knife are used in similar applications as well as mold releasing, package cleaning, label applications and plastic bag opening.
Gen4 Super Ion Air Wipe
Gen4 Super Ion Air Wipe: This product blows ionized air in a 360-degree pattern. They are engineered to remove static and debris from the outside of hoses, plastic pipe, extrusions, and coated wires. With the split design, the Gen4 Super Ion Air Wipe can easily mount around the product without having to rethread. They come in two different sizes with a 2” (51mm) and 4” (102mm) inner diameter. The ionized air has a fast static decay for speedy transfers.
Gen4 Ion Air Cannon
Gen4 Ion Air Cannon: Just like the name, this product will shower an area with ions to remove static. It can reach distances up to 15 feet (4.6 meters). They are used in multiple areas including pre-paint car bodies, containers, shrink packaging, lenses, etc. As an Air Amplifier, a small amount of compressed air will draw in a large amount of ambient air. The ions are carried to the surface from the Gen4 Ion Air Cannon in a laminar air steam. Once the ions coat the surface area, the air flow can gently remove any debris held by static forces.
Gen4 Ion Air Gun
Gen4 Ion Air Gun: For manual static removal to target specific areas, the Gen4 Ion Air Gun will work great. This product comes standard with 10 feet (3 meters) of shielded cable for maximum reach. An ergonomic air gun is attached to a Gen4 Ion Air Jet to manually remove static in difficult areas and from “shock” zones. The Ion Air Guns work great for small batch processes used for quality checks or label applications.
Gen4 Ion Air Jet
Gen4 Ion Air Jet: Similar to the Ion Air Gun, this product is used for “hands-free” operations. They use a small amount of compressed air to “shoot” the ions onto a surface. They can be operated with a solenoid valve or foot pedal to blow ions during specific times and situations. They can easily be attached to a Stay Set Hose and Magnetic Base for best “hands-free” positioning for optimal cleaning. They work well on small targets for automated systems or inspections areas prior to packaging.
The Gen4 Static Eliminators with air can be purchased with kits which will include the power supply (required for ionization), a filter (to clean contamination from the compressed air), and a regulator (to control the blowing force). In the spirit of compressed air efficiency, EXAIR also offers the Electronic Flow Control, EFC, that uses a photoelectric sensor to turn on the air flow only when the product is under the Static Eliminator.
Gen4 Static Eliminators without Air:
Gen4 Ionizing Bar
Gen4 Ionizing Bar: This rugged design is for industrial use to remove static cling from flat surfaces. They range from a length of 3” (76mm) to 108” (2.74 meters). Without the assistance of air, the product has to be within 2 inches (51 mm) from the surface to remove static charges. The Gen4 Ionizing Bar is shockless and works well in applications where blowing air could be a detriment for the process. This would include screen printing, labeling, and large printing process.
Gen4 Ionizing Point
Gen4 Ionizing Point: This single point design is manufactured to remove static on small targets in tight spots. Utilizing the same rugged design of the Gen4 Static Eliminators, this product can remove static in spot areas and help to stop jams in slitting operations. They can also be panel mounted to neutralize duct air.
If you find that static is creating process problems, wasting time, and costing you money, EXAIR has a large line of Gen4 Static Eliminators that can help you. You can contact an Application Engineer at EXAIR to select the correct model and remove that static nuisance.
