New Air Cradle for Quick and Efficient Air Gun Storage

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

EXAIR now offers the new Air Cradle Safety Air Gun Mount, a simple but innovative accessory designed to keep safety air guns and similarly sized tools within easy reach at workstations and machine centers. With its strong magnetic loop design, the Air Cradle provides a convenient, highly accessible hang point for safety air guns, helping improve workflow, minimize tool misplacement, and promote a more organized, efficient work environment across manufacturing, assembly, shipping, and other general shop applications.

The Air Cradle is a magnetic loop that securely holds a safety air gun or other often-used tools in place on any available magnetic surface, ensuring the tool remains at arm’s reach when needed most. Its versatile design allows operators to mount the cradle on equipment such as mills, lathes, cutoff saws, or any metal surface in a busy shop floor. The simplicity and effectiveness of the design mean that workers can instantly return tools to a designated location, reducing time spent searching for misplaced airguns and enhancing overall productivity. Capable of holding up to 10lbs, it’s a handy addition to any workstation.

Part of EXAIR’s extensive portfolio of useful accessories, the Air Cradle complements the company’s lineup of safety air guns and nozzles by offering a practical storage solution that reinforces proper tool handling and shop organization. Easy to install and use, the Air Cradle reflects EXAIR’s commitment to delivering reliable, quality-engineered solutions that help industrial teams work more safely and efficiently. Air Cradle prices start at $30.

If you have any questions about the air cradle or any of our Safety Air Guns, please reach out!

Jordan Shouse, CCASS

Application Engineer / Sales Operations Engineer

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Laminar vs. Turbulent Flow

Published on by jasonkirbyLeave a comment
If the object you’re blowing off is flat, the laminar air flow from a Super Air Knife is ideal. They come in lengths from 3 inches to 9 feet long.

EXAIR often differentiates between laminar and turbulent flow in relation to our blow-off products. To clarify, laminar airflow is notably more efficient in blow-off applications, as it reduces pressure drops, enhances product displacement, and minimizes noise levels when compared to turbulent airflow. Understanding these distinctions is essential for optimizing performance in various applications.

Laminar flow describes a type of airflow where the velocity and direction remain uniform throughout a designated volume of air. This phenomenon results in air movement that occurs in straight lines, aligning parallel to any solid surfaces present in the area.

Laminar airflow is effective in reducing turbulence. However, the introduction of devices or materials on surfaces can unintentionally create swirls within the workspace. This chaotic turbulent flow can disrupt tasks that require a dust-free environment, leading to potential contamination. Furthermore, obstructions such as items left inside enclosures can exacerbate this issue.

The Super Air Knife by EXAIR serves as a prime example of a product that delivers laminar airflow. This cutting-edge tool offers an efficient solution for tasks such as cleaning, drying, or cooling various components, webs, or conveyors. It produces a steady sheet of laminar airflow that applies a consistent force along its entire length, ensuring optimal performance for a wide range of applications.

Turbulent airflow is characterized by its unpredictable and chaotic fluid dynamics, standing in stark contrast to laminar flow, where fluids move in smooth, parallel layers. In turbulent conditions, the fluid’s speed and direction are in constant flux, leading to the development of eddies and swirls within the flow.

If you have questions about laminar or turbulent airflow, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Jason Kirby
Application Engineer
Email: jasonkirby@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jk

Stop Waiting for Spring: Solve Low Humidity Static Problems Now w/ EXAIR’s Ion Air Cannon

Published on by Tyler DanielLeave a comment
Gen4 Ion Air Cannon

Winter’s arrival means a sharp drop in relative humidity, which directly translates to an uptick in static-related service calls. When the air gets dry, materials like paper, plastic, and textiles lose their natural ionic balance. Friction during the manufacturing process strips electrons from atoms, creating a static charge that wreaks havoc on your production line.

This isn’t just a minor annoyance. Static charges exert a physical force on nearby charged objects and grounded conductors, including your operators. You see the results in real-time: dust clinging to finished products, materials jamming in machine beds, or sheets sticking together during feeding. Our Gen4 Static Eliminators are engineered to solve these issues across a wide range of industries. To ensure they meet your facility’s safety requirements, these tools have undergone independent laboratory testing to certify they meet the rigorous standards for CE and UL marks in the USA, Canada, and the European Union.

One of the most effective tools in our lineup is the Gen4 Ion Air Cannon. It is designed to neutralize static charges at distances up to 15 feet without the need for moving parts. By utilizing an EXAIR 2-inch Super Air Amplifier, the unit maximizes ionized airflow while keeping compressed air consumption to a minimum. The performance is quantifiable: the Ion Air Cannon produces a concentrated, quiet stream of air capable of eliminating a 5kV charge in only 0.37 seconds.

Ion Air Cannon removes static during the car painting process to prevent dust clinging and other particulate that lead to imperfections.

The Ion Air Cannon also features a compact footprint that saves valuable bench space and allows for mounting in confined areas where larger ionizers won’t fit. Each unit comes with a pre-drilled swivel stand that allows you to precisely aim the airflow at your problem area. We see this product solve diverse application problems daily, such as removing static from motorcycle bodies before painting to prevent debris from ruining the finish, or static removal on PCB boards to protect sensitive components during assembly. It is also a staple in high-speed packaging environments, like disposable diaper manufacturing, where static can stop a line cold.

We keep a wide variety of static elimination products in stock and ready to ship. There is no reason to struggle through the winter waiting for humidity levels to rise in the spring. Get a Gen4 Static Eliminator on your line now and keep your operations running static-free for the rest of the year.

Tyler Daniel, CCASS

Application Engineer

E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com

What’s So Great About EXAIR’s CAD Library?

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

I was first introduced to CAD drawings when I was in the Navy. Right out of Nuclear Power School, I reported to a new construction Trident submarine. My first job was taking paper P&ID’s (Piping & Instrumentation Diagrams) to the Engineering room to verify that the valves, flanges, welds, pressure gauges, thermometers, etc. of various reactor and steam plant piping systems were in the right place, correctly labeled or marked, and visually free of defects. They’ve come a LONG way, technologically, since then:

When I left the Navy, I included some vague verbiage about CAD expertise on my resume. That actually got me a pretty cool job with an industrial pump company…making to-scale drawings of pump and drive assemblies, usually mounted on steel baseplates, that showed distances from the pump’s fluid ports to the baseplate mounting holes, so the millwrights & pipe fitters could work together to prepare for installation.

The absolute number one most important resource I had at my disposal was the ability to get to-scale CAD files (.dxf or .dwg) from pump, motor, gearbox, coupling, etc., manufacturers. The first rule of CAD is “never draw anything twice” and I rarely had to draw anything, except for items that we were fabricating ourselves. I had to call some manufacturers; others I could email; some would mail out a 3.5″ floppy disk (I know I’m dating myself with that one) or a CD (before THEY went obsolete) with everything they made on it…and some had drawing files you could download straight from their website. Just like EXAIR does.

Almost all the drawings I made back in the late 20th Century were 2D (front and side views), but nowadays, almost everyone uses solid modeling software (or apps) for drawings. This has the distinct advantage of being able to see the assembly from any angle, so you can tell right away if there’s going to be physical interference between two parts in close proximity to each other. While you can download models in a number of formats from the EXAIR website, .stp files are common to most modeling apps, so they’re the ones that get downloaded most.

If you have questions about EXAIR products — how they work, what they’re made of, which one is best for your application – give me a call. And if you need a drawing, I can help with that too.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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