Category: Vortex Tubes

When The Obvious Answer, Isn’t

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

Certain EXAIR products are designed for specific applications. We’ll still get calls from folks who want to use them in situations different than what they’re intended. For instance:

*Reversible Drum Vacs for use with volatile liquids. Due to the very real risk of ignition, we do not specify our Industrial Vacuums for use with flammables. This is a case where we can’t help, but we do know some suppliers of suitable equipment for these situations.

*Cabinet Cooler Systems for anything but a totally enclosed electrical cabinet. Oftentimes, these alternate applications are really just in need of a reliable, consistent source of cold air, which can be more properly addressed with a Cold Gun, Adjustable Spot Cooler or Mini Cooler.

*Speaking of those particular Spot Cooling Products, we’re able to help many callers who inquire about these by simply pointing them in the direction of a Vortex Tube: they’re lightweight, compact, and with standard NPT connections for compressed air supply, cold flow, and hot exhaust, you can hook them up to darn near anything you want.

Coat_Conserve_Cool_Convey_Clean
A broad range of products, each with a broad range of applications!

Like the Vortex Tubes, a good many of our products’ designs afford adaptability to a wide range of uses. I submit, for your reading pleasure, these two wildly different Line Vac applications:

*A manufacturer of electrical connector devices needed to move small parts from a mass production line to their assembly area. A Model 6084 2” Aluminum Line Vac and our 6934-20 2” Clear Reinforced PVC Conveyance Hose (20ft Length) was purchased and installed. They operate it as needed to empty the production bin and fill the assembly bin; simple as that. This is a “textbook” job for a Line Vac.

*A service company that specializes in large compressors & engines was looking for a compact & mobile device to evacuate exhaust gases. This is normally where we start talking about Air Amplifiers (and we did) but their calculations called for more suction head than the Air Amplifiers will generate. Their calculations were right, and they’re putting Model 6060 ¾” Stainless Steel Line Vacs on all their service trucks. So, a “textbook” job for an Air Amplifier was actually a better fit for the Line Vac.

And speaking of “textbook” applications that take unexpected turns, another caller needed help with a “pick and place” operation that he’d purchased a small E-Vac Vacuum Generator and Vacuum Cup for. He needed to move these small media filters, one at a time, from a stack, into their product. Try as they might, they could NOT pick up just one of these pieces from the stack, which was about 3” in diameter, and about the consistency of a coffee filter….which was exactly what I used to replicate the application in the Efficiency Lab. I couldn’t just pick one up with the E-Vac either, so I tried to just use the open suction end of a Line Vac – even with the compressed air supply valve cracked open as low as I could manage, it still wanted to pick up 2 or 3 at a time. We’ve got one other product that generates a vacuum, and, crazy as it sounds, I attempted to apply our Air Amplifier in a pick-and-place situation. And it worked: with the supply valve cracked open (it wasn’t even registering flow to the smallest division on our rotameter flow meter,) the Model 120020 ¾” Super Air Amplifier was able to consistently pick up one (and only one) coffee filter at a time. So our “textbook” job for an E-Vac was solved by an Air Amplifier.

Sometimes, what seems to be the obvious solution, isn’t. With a little discussion, and possibly experimentation, though, the right answer will generally reveal itself. If you think this might be where you’re at with your application, give us a call. I can’t wait to see what happens!

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
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Cool Job, Cool Products

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

I’ve got a pretty cool job. I’ve written about this before…in fact, as recently as last week, in a piece about workplace safety, and how EXAIR is all over it, all the way. Brian Farno also blogged the other day about how EXAIR recognizes, appreciates, and celebrates achievement. Like usual, actually.

So yeah; this is a pretty cool job. And, just to put that into perspective, my first “grown up” job set the bar pretty high: upon completion of Naval Nuclear Power School, I was assigned to the initial manning crew of a new construction Trident submarine. When I got there in the spring of 1987, “tha thirty-five boat,” as the future USS Pennsylvania (SSBN-735) was known, was ON the pier (not NEXT to it) and we boarded through hull cuts in Engine Room Lower Level & the Torpedo Room. For two years, we worked with shipyard personnel to install, test, & certify all ship’s systems, and then took her out in the summer of 1989 for a rigorous series of sea trials. I wish there were words capable of conveying the extent of “job satisfaction” we felt when we submerged for the first time, and the whole ocean stayed outside the boat.

I was reminded of this the other day when I saw a news account of the bow section of a submarine being transported via barge from the shipyard that fabricated this section, to the shipyard that’s assembling the boat. Here’s a video clip of one such transit, from about a year ago:

I’ve written before about how compressed air is (and isn’t) used on board a submarine at sea. Compressed air is also used, for some pretty neat stuff, in their construction & service. And EXAIR Compressed Air Products are in the mix:

*Sometimes during work on a piping system, it’s not possible to isolate a particular section with valves, so a freeze seal is applied: a collar fits around the outside of the pipe, and very cold fluid is circulated through the collar. This freezes the liquid inside the pipe, forming a “plug,” which allows you to work on the piping downstream, just the same as if you had shut a valve there. One method of doing this is with liquid nitrogen…you take a big tank of the stuff to your work site, implement all the safety precautions you need to handle pressurized liquid at -321°F (spoiler alert: it’s complicated,) make up your connections, hope they don’t leak, and activate the system. Depending on the length of the job and the size of the tank, you may need to change it out…which, again, is complicated.  And yes, I’ve done it.

It's a real shame to foul this view with a block & tackle to lower a pressurized nitrogen tank down.
It’s a real shame to foul this view with a block & tackle to lower a pressurized nitrogen tank down.

Or, like several shipyards are doing currently, you can install an EXAIR Maximum Cold Temperature Vortex Tube to the collar, run a compressed air line to it, and you can supply cold air as low as -40°F, which will freeze a plug in that pipe for as long as you keep your air compressor running.

Vortex Tube
EXAIR Vortex Tubes produce cold air, on demand, with no moving parts.

*Another application has to do not with the equipment, but the people working on it. Welding is a hot job – there’s really no way around it – and welding in tight spaces can present real issues for the folks involved. Fans and blowers can provide a good amount of ventilation, but they also take up some room, which there may not be any to spare.

Enter EXAIR Air Amplifiers – they’re compact, lightweight, and use a small amount of compressed air to blow a high flow of cooling air, right where it’s needed.

EXAIR Air Amplifiers use a small amount of compressed air to create a tremendous amount of air flow.
EXAIR Air Amplifiers use a small amount of compressed air to create a tremendous amount of air flow.

These are just a couple of examples of how a large industry – shipbuilding – is using EXAIR products to capitalize on efficiency in a challenging environment. Regardless of your situation, if you’d like to learn if EXAIR can help out, give us a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
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Up Ladder courtesy of Russ Bowman  Creative Commons License

Vortex Tube Cools Molded Product to Prevent Defects

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

A manufacturer of synthetic roof shakes contacted me about a cooling application.  Their style of roof shake is made of a synthetic compound that is molded to look like cedar or stone in a variety of different colors.  They contacted EXAIR because they were getting a “bump” on the face of the roof shake.  It was determined that the vacuum cups used to move them were causing the defect.  The molded product did not have enough time to cool before the 2” (51mm) vacuum cups created an impression on the face.  In order to keep the quality department from rejecting the parts, they would have to wait for them to cool sufficiently before they could move them, costing them money.

Cooling with the Vortex Tube
Cooling with the Vortex Tube

 

The part was coming out of the machine at 300 deg. F (149 deg. C).  With the cycle time of the operation, they needed to try and cool the part just enough to harden the material before the vacuum was applied.  This would insure that the synthetic material would not deform.  The molding process created two shakes at a time.  A robot arm with the vacuum system would grab each shake using two suction cups.

Converting the size of the area to cool, I was able to calculate the estimated time to reduce the temperature to 200 deg. F (93 deg. C).  (This was from a previous blog, “Let’s Cool Things Down with Heat Transfer Equations”).  I recommended the 3225 Vortex Tubes.  It would only take 1 second to cool to the desired temperature.  And that was plenty enough time for this operation to resist the vacuum pressure.   I also recommended the model 3902 generator kit.  It would give the customer the ability to change the cooling capacity from 650 to 2,800 BTU/hr (164 to 706 Kcal/hr) for different weights and styles of roof shakes.  The Vortex Tube generators are easy to change for quick changes in cooling capacity.  I also suggested the 5901 single point hose kit to aim the cool air to the exact location.

EXAIR stocks our catalog products; so, the customer was able to be in full production status without defects within 24 hours of talking to an Application Engineer.

Vortex Kit
Vortex Tube Cooling Kit

 

John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

Aircoolant System Cools Aluminum Laminate Cutting Process

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

A machine shop contacted me about a cutting/sawing application.  The customer had a new project to cut an aluminum laminate sheet.   The laminate sheet had a specialized material integrated within the aluminum.  The crux of this situation was that the material could not come in contact with any type of liquid coolant.  Most of his machines used liquid coolant to keep his tools sharp and long lasting.  In this operation, he could use a radial arm saw to cut the sheet, but the blade on this saw was expensive.  Without liquid coolant, he did not want to run the risk of damaging the blade.

My suggestion was to use the model 5330 High Power Cold Gun System.  It is designed to cool tools during milling, drilling, grinding, and sawing operations.  It can reduce the temperature of compressed air by 50 deg. F (28 deg. C).  It has a magnetic base for easy mounting and a dual point hose kit to cool both sides of the blade evenly.  In a short time, he could see the benefit in operating speeds and without using coolant, faster cleanup.  He was able to land the project, operate longer between blade changes, and open the possibility to get more business with new similar applications.

High Power Cold Air Gun

With the new types of materials being generated today, many applications cannot use liquid coolant.  Besides the example above, it would be the same for applications in electronics, food, and pharmaceutical. EXAIR has a range of Aircoolant Systems that may fit into your application.  If you would like more details, you can contact one of our Application Engineers.

 

John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb