It’s that time of year again for EXAIR‘s Cold Gun Promotion (online only). From November 1st 2024 through to the end of the year, you can receive a Dual Point Hose Kit for free with the purchase of our promotional Cold Gun System w/ Single Point Hose Kit or promotional High Power Cold Gun System w/ Single Point Hose Kit. These hose kits come with standard point tips or 1″ fan tips. The dual point kit gives you the ability to provide cooling to more than one side of large diameter cutters and components that need cooling.
Cold Guns Systems
So, what’s so great about EXAIR’s Cold Gun? If you’re looking for a way to extend the life of your tools by keeping them cool without the mess that can be left when using a coolant, then our Cold Gun is the perfect solution. When supplied with a source of compressed air, the Cold Gun and High Power Cold Gun produces a stream of clean, cold air that is 50°F below your compressed air supply temperature. In addition to this, the Cold Gun is very quiet at only 70dBA and has no moving parts to wear out. Just supply it with clean, dry compressed air, and it will run maintenance free for many years!
With a magnetic base, the Cold Gun is easy to install and mount. The Cold Gun is an ideal alternative to messy and expensive coolant mist systems. It eliminates the cost of purchase and disposal of cutting fluids as well as worker related health problems from breathing airborne coolant or slipping on wet floors. Replacing a coolant-based system also eliminates the need for secondary cleaning operations after milling or drilling.
If you would like to discuss how an EXAIR Cold Gun can help you with your coolant application, then give us a call!
If you’re reading the EXAIR Blog, you’re probably well aware that compressed air is the most expensive utility in an industrial environment. The average cost to generate 1000 Standard Cubic Feet of compressed air is $0.25. If you’re familiar with how much air you use on a daily basis, you’ll understand just how quickly that adds up.
To make matters worse, many compressed air systems waste significant amounts of compressed air just through leaks. According to the Compressed Air Challenge, a typical plant that has not been well maintained will likely have a leak rate of approximately 20%!! Good luck explaining to your finance department that you’re carelessly wasting 20% of the most expensive utility.
The six steps to optimizing your compressed air system is something we cover a fair amount on this blog. And there is a real reason for that. Yes, we sell compressed air products. But we are also aware compressed air costs money to generate, so using this source responsibly is very important.
This is where the 6 steps come into play, but today we are just covering Step 3. Which is upgrading your blow off, cooling and drying operations using engineered compressed air products. (If you want to read about the other 5 steps, check them out here, Step #1, Step #2, Step #4, Step #5, Step #6)
I compare step three to replacing your house windows. We recently got some prices to replace our windows, but along with that comes the cost savings we expect to get as they are better designed now than in the 1990ies to retain your temperature inside. Thus reducing the cost to cool and heat your home.
Similar to my “upgrade” to new windows, upgrading blow offs, cooling and drying operations using engineered compressed air products is Step 3 in EXAIR’s Six Steps To Optimizing Your Compressed Air System. We’ve assigned an order to these steps in accordance with basic good engineering practice & protocol, but it’s not necessary to follow them in any particular order. In fact, all six steps really don’t apply to every single compressed air system.
Step 3 does apply to most systems, though. I spent a fair amount of time in all sorts of industrial facilities in my previous roles, and almost all the time, regardless of the industry or the size of the facility, the maintenance and production part of the facility used air guns. However, I don’t recall ever seeing an engineered nozzle on one before I came to EXAIR. Since then, I’ve worked with a bunch of users to dramatically reduce compressed air consumption by replacing their cheap and inefficient air guns with EXAIR Safety Air Guns, or by retrofitting EXAIR Super Air Nozzles onto their existing air guns. We actually carry adapters to fit our Super Air Nozzles to a number of readily commercially available air guns for that very purpose.
In addition to air guns & nozzles, our Air Knives have a long history of replacing drilled pipes & pipe manifolds with inefficient nozzles used to make a curtain of air flow. The following chart details the savings you can get from the use of a 24″ Super Air Knife instead of similar devices for a 24″ wide air curtain:
Even though an electric powered blower will use less electricity than the amount of electricity an air compressor uses to supply an engineered product like the Super Air Knife, the maintenance costs make the total cost of ownership eclipse that of the engineered Air Knife.
Our Case Study Library documents many real-world situations where customers worked with us to gather & publish “before/after” documentation, proving the benefits of Step 3. I encourage you to check those out, and if you think you might have an opportunity to do a Case Study with us, we offer discounts or credit for that…give me a call.
At EXAIR we are proud of our ability to ship our stock and catalog products the same day or the next day on orders received before 2:00pm ET. If you need a replacement part, or a new solution altogether, we can likely get the product to you in no time at all. There are certain applications, however, where the solution is more specific, and our stock options are not going to work out best. There may be a need for a different material, or a specific geometry to get the results the customer is looking for. For instances like this, we work with our customers to create a special, non-stock option.
I was recently working with a customer that needed an Air Knife to cool their material coming out of a hot process. This is a common application for our Air Knives, but for this particular customer, the shape of the Air Knife wasn’t going to fit in their machine. After some discussion, we determined that a curved Air Knife was going to be the best fit (pun intended).
After the customer provided some initial specifications, we put a drawing together. With some back and forth, reviewing drawings, and signing off on final designs, we set to work, producing their specially designed product. Within a few weeks, we were able to provide the specific solution to meet their needs.
If you have an application that needs a more tailor-made solution, give us a call!
For most of my life, when I brushed my teeth, I’d squeeze out enough toothpaste from the tube to cover the bristles of my toothbrush from one end to the other. That’s what the picture on the side of the toothpaste tube showed. Then, there I was at the dentist’s office one day, in the fifth decade of my life, when I was old enough to know I didn’t have EVERYTHING figured out, but I certainly had brushing my teeth down pat, and the hygienist casually mentioned something about a pea-sized drop of toothpaste being the correct amount to use. THAT couldn’t be right, I thought, but she was confident…and an industry professional…so I took her advice and started using about 1/4 of the amount of toothpaste I’d been using MY WHOLE LIFE.
Recently, I switched (at the suggestion of that same hygienist) the TYPE of toothpaste I was using (apparently protecting tooth enamel is a thing when you make it to my age), and the end of the tube itself is different from the type of tube I’d been using for decades. So different, in fact, that the same squeeze I’d been applying to get a pea-sized drop of toothpaste out now filled the bristles of my toothbrush…again! So I had to re-develop some new muscle memory before the money and time I was spending on toothpaste got all out of hand.
Back in 2017, EXAIR developed a new and innovative style of handheld blowoff device: the VariBlast Compact Safety Air Gun. As the name suggests, the “blast” can be “varied” by the operator’s pull of the trigger. They’re available, from stock, with a variety of our engineered Air Nozzles installed:
Rigid Extensions (in lengths up to 72″) and Chip Shields are available with all of these as well.
VariBlast® Precision Safety Air Guns
2022 Professional Tool & Equipment News PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD WINNER
These feature our three smallest Super Air Nozzles, and they’re made for applications that need a tight, focused air flow. The Atto, Pico, and Nano Super Air Nozzles come in hard and durable 316SS or non-marring PEEK thermoplastic. Both offer superior resistance to chemical or corrosive attack. For added reach, we can put 12″ or 20″ extensions between the handle and the Air Nozzle. Like the VariBlast Compact Safety Air Guns, Chip Shields are available on all models.
If you have blowoff applications where precise control by the operator is desirable, a VariBlast Precision or Compact Safety Air Gun is just what you’re looking for. If you’d like to discuss it, give me a call.
Russ Bowman, CCASS
Application Engineer Visit us on the Web Follow me on Twitter Like us on Facebook
