EXAIR Atomizing Spray Nozzles For Food Tray Mold Release Agent

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

PET (polyethylene terephthalate) is one of the most common plastics that we see on a day-to-day basis. It’s what they make water and soda (or ‘soft drink’ or ‘pop’, depending on where you live) bottles out of, along with a lot of other products you find on the shelves and in the refrigerated cases of your local grocery store. A couple of times a week, we cook up a nice piece of fish from the seafood counter at our corner grocery: salmon if my wife stops in; whatever white fish is on sale if I do. Whichever becomes that night’s dinner, in any case, is packaged in a PET tray and sealed with plastic film.

I recently had the pleasure of talking with a caller whose company makes those trays. Turns out, they begin life as great big sheets, before they’re cut into smaller rectangles and formed in a mold press. Most anything that’s formed into a shape like that, with force and heat, needs to have some sort of lubricant – called a release agent – applied to the surface to make sure it exits the mold quickly and easily. In ANY molded product application, it’s advantageous to use as little as possible, for two reasons: specialty chemicals like these release agents can get expensive – especially the ones for food, beverage, or pharmaceutical use – and also because any remaining agent will get sealed up with whatever’s getting packaged.

Anyway, my caller’s molding machine came with spray nozzles that, no matter how low the flow was regulated, still sprayed too much. That meant the trays had no problem at all with falling right out of the mold, but the excess release agent was oftentimes causing HIS customer’s plastic film to not seal properly onto the finished food product, and he’d recently gotten an earful about it. He wished there was something he could use that didn’t spray much more than a light fog, because his supplier for the premium food grade release agent he used was always bragging that a light fog was all that was needed. In fact, the supplier actually recommended an EXAIR Model AF2010SS No-Drip Internal Mix, Flat Fan Atomizing Spray Nozzle.

With a flow rate as low as 1.2 gallons per hour, a one-second ‘spritz’ means 0.04 fluid ounces (that’s about a quarter of a teaspoon) gets spread out over the 16″ width of the mold. Which is just enough to let the freshly molded tray fall right out, with almost no residue left over.

When not-much-more-than-a-light-fog is called for, look no further than EXAIR Air Atomizing Spray Nozzles!

Whether your liquid spraying application involves pricey fluids that you don’t want to waste, or if you just don’t want to have to deal with the mess of over spraying, EXAIR has a wide selection of Air Atomizing Spray Nozzles to choose from. If you’d like to find out more, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
Visit us on the Web
Follow me on Twitter
Like us on Facebook

Necessity Is The Mother of Invention

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

Necessity is the mother of invention, or something like that. My garage is riddled with “tools” that have come from necessity at any specific point in time.

Things like a socket that has been ground down around the outer wall to fit into a space that was too tight for anything else. Maybe it is a combination line wrench that has been torch-heated and bent to go around another hard line. Eventually, it will need to be reheated and bent back to near straight. I even have some special ground screwdrivers and punches that have been used on various projects. At the moment, I can’t remember whether one was for installing a retaining ring in a master cylinder on a brake system or for removing a key from a shaft. The unique purpose eventually fades from memory after you do it so many times.

The one that I have used most recently is a mason jar that has some fittings attached to the lid and has some tubing coiled up inside. If you have ever worked on car or motorcycle brakes with me, then there is a very good chance we have used this tool at some point.

This tool started as it was purchased, with a hand pump and a small fluid container. After starting at EXAIR and bleeding several motorcycle brake systems, I recognized the need for something easier and less back-and-forth than the hand pump. So I placed a small E-Vac onto the system instead of the hand pump. I blogged about this back in April 2010. That was one of my first blogs here at EXAIR as an Application and ever for that matter. After the addition of the E-Vac, and working on some larger systems, I realized the small container was not sufficient and needed to be emptied too frequently. I needed a chamber that would handle vacuum and not degrade with brake fluid exposure. I just happened to have been canning some tomatoes and saw an extra mason jar sitting there. A couple of fittings later and I now have a 1-qt capacity pneumatic brake bleeder system.

Fast-forward to last week, and I was using the same mason jar vacuum system to draw all the power steering fluid out of two vehicles and perform a fluid change on them. This system has been loaned out to many of my friends over the past decade and always comes back to sit on the shelf until it is needed again. I may even be using it this weekend to help with a new clutch install with a friend.

At EXAIR we have a fairly extensive listing of products available in stock configurations. However, we also love to talk about how we can modify them to suit special circumstances. Please let us know if you want to discuss how we can help you create a purpose-built system or tool to suit your needs.

    

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Comparing and Combining Sound Levels

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

Sound levels are an important safety consideration in most industrial facilities. OSHA has guidelines on allowable noise levels and exposure, covered in OSHA Standard 29CFR – 1910.95 (a). Sound levels are measured in decibels, or dB. It makes sense that a higher decibel value means a louder sound (as illustrated in the graphic below). What is not intuitive is how multiple sound levels interact and combine, or how they compare to one another.

The first thing to understand about sound levels is that they aren’t measured on a linear scale. Instead, they’re measured on a logarithmic scale. This can really throw off our intuition. For instance, a sound at 20dB is actually 10 times stronger than one at 10dB, and a sound at 30dB is 100 times stronger than 10dB. If it were a linear scale, 20dB and 30dB would only be 2 and 3 times stronger than 10dB, similar to how mass works—like 20kg being double the mass of 10kg.

You can see why this is the case with the formula for calculating sound levels, which is as follows:

It’s important to note that the sound pressure levels calculated using this formula are unweighted. To really grasp how loud something will seem to us, we have to consider how our ears pick up various frequencies. This means that low and extremely high frequencies are given less weight than on the standard decibel scale. This adjusted measurement is referred to as dBA. You can check out some typical sounds and their dBA levels in the chart below:

Because of this logarithmic scale, combining two sounds can be pretty counter-intuitive too. Our Model 1100 Super Air Nozzle generates a sound level of 74 dBA, but when you place two of them side by side, the sound level jumps to 78 dBA (and not 148dBA). This is determined using the formula below:

The specifics of this calculation are explained in this blog here, but OHSA provides a quick and easy way to calculate, as shown in the table below:

To see if you need to tackle the noise levels in your facility, you should start by taking a baseline measurement of the different processes and devices that are making the noise. EXAIR’s Sound Level Meter, Model 9104, is here to help. It’s super user-friendly and gives you a digital readout of the sound level (no need to deal with logarithms!).

If you would like to discuss sound levels in your facility, or any of your other compressed air needs, give us a call!

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

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

Video Blog: Designing and Fabricating Complete Systems for EXAIR Products

Published on by Tyler DanielLeave a comment

EXAIR has been manufacturing engineered, point-of-use compressed air products since 1983. Just last year, we entered into a new partnership with BETE – experts in Spray Nozzle Technology. BETE has been doing this since 1950, bringing with them a wealth of experience that complements our activities here at EXAIR.

With the expertise of BETE’s Systems & Fabrication department, we’re now able to provide a complete turnkey solution to customers looking for more than just their EXAIR Products. Check out the video below for an overview and recent example of a simple system developed for a customer utilizing one of our Stainless Steel Super Air Knives:

In the past, you were left to your own to design the complete system and process requirements. Now, with our partners at BETE, we can offer everything from A to Z. Get in touch with us today if you’d like to explore a potential solution!

Tyler Daniel, CCASS

Application Engineer/International Trade

E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com

X: @EXAIR_TD