Tag: 3925

Adjustable Spot Cooler Improves Production Of Can Lids

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Canned food has been around since the early 1800s, when the French government offered 12,000 francs (I don’t know how much that is in today’s currency, but it sounds like a LOT) to the first person to come up with a way to effectively and affordably preserve food, so the French army could take it with them during Napoleon’s planned conquest of Europe. Nicolas Appert, a candy maker and chef to the rich and famous, had been experimenting with cooking food inside sealed containers and noticed that it didn’t spoil if the seals didn’t leak. So he demonstrated his technique to the powers that be, and walked away with the 12,000 franc prize. It didn’t really pan out for the army because the process was slow & expensive, but canned food became something of a novelty among the aforementioned rich & famous of the day. This WAS the heyday of the Industrial Revolution, though, and food companies quickly advanced the technology for mass production. Today, there are very few food products that you won’t find a canned or jarred version of. In the early days, you had to use a can opener, but today you can find pull tabs on many cans, especially beverages.

Ever since Jimmy Buffett cut his heel on the one on the left in “Margaritaville”, we’ve been drinking from cans with ‘pop tops’ like the one on the right.

A more recent innovation is a peel-off foil seal on the lid that seals the product for freshness, immediately after packaging. It’s then removed by the consumer after purchase, and the container is commonly supplied with a plastic lid that snaps onto the rim.

A container manufacturer uses Model 3925 Adjustable Spot Cooler Systems with Dual Outlet Cold Air Hoses to rapidly cool the freshly heated sealed foil onto metal lids like those that are used for coffee cans. This allows them to move the lids from the heat sealing station to the next process faster.

From left to right: EXAIR Mini Coolers, Cold Guns, and Adjustable Spot Coolers come with Magnetic Bases for instant installation.

Because they generate cold air flow on demand, this is a very common application for EXAIR Vortex Tube Spot Cooler products. With no moving parts to wear or electrical components to burn out, they’re reliable & durable. If you’d like to find out more, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Hot Off The Press (Release): Adjustable Spot Cooler Provides Precise Industrial Cooling

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I got a new cell phone a few months ago. It was my first ‘upgrade’ in quite some time, and while it has some neat features (along with a bunch of stuff I’ll NEVER use), there was one glaring omission: a 1/8″ port for the cord of my trusty earbuds. I even took the protective case off, looking for it. After just barely managing to get the case back on, I bought myself my first ever wireless earbuds. After scanning the ‘quick reference’ guide, I steeled my reserve for the long & arduous process of getting them up and running. To my pleasant surprise, they were fully charged, and, right out of the case, started pairing with my new cell phone. I was drowning out the sound of my lawnmower to 1970s Heavy Metal in no time!

You know what else is ready to go, right out of the box? EXAIR’s Adjustable Spot Cooler System, that’s what. OK; it doesn’t automatically connect itself to your compressed air system, but once you hook an air hose up to it, it makes a flow of cold air instantly. With the Temperature Control Valve, you can change the cold air flow and temperature just as instantly. If the 25 SCFM Generator that comes installed doesn’t make enough flow – or if it makes too much – the Adjustable Spot Cooler System comes with two more Generators (15 SCFM and 30 SCFM) that’ll put it into a whole new performance band.

The Adjustable Spot Cooler incorporates a vortex tube to convert an ordinary supply of compressed air (1) into two low pressure streams, one hot and one cold. With the turn of a knob, the temperature control valve (2) allows some hot air to flow through a muffling sleeve and out the hot air exhaust (3). The opposite end provides a cold airstream (4) that is muffled and discharged through the flexible hose, which directs it to the point of use. The swivel magnetic base (5) provides easy mounting and portability.

I was excited to hear that the Adjustable Spot Coolers were the focus of our latest Press Release. With their ease of installation and operation, they’re ideal for a wide variety of applications:

  • Adjusting thermostats
  • Cooling solder
  • Setting hot melts
  • Cooling welding horns, machined or molded plastics, gas samples, etc.
Your choice of a system with a one outlet, or two outlet Cold Air Hose.

If you need a blast of cold air that can be precisely controlled, right at the source, look no further than the Adjustable Spot Cooler. If you have an application you’d like to discuss, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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What’s So Great About The Adjustable Spot Cooler?

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EXAIR Adjustable Spot Coolers are ideally suited to a number of applications that need a flow of cold air on demand. Different applications will require more or less flow, and higher or lower temperatures. Let’s say you’re trying to cool an object to ambient temperature with a Model 3825 Adjustable Spot Cooler supplied with compressed air at 100psig and 70°F, but it’s not cooling the object as fast as you’d like. You can:

  • Increase the supply pressure, if possible. With a 100psig inlet pressure to the Adjustable Spot Cooler, you’re getting 20 SCFM of cold flow, at 16°F (assuming it’s set to an 80% Cold Fraction, which is usually ideal for spot cooling.) If you can get it to 120psig, you’ll increase the cold flow from 20 SCFM (80% of the 25 SCFM it’s using at 100psig) to 23.4 SCFM (80% of the 29.3 SCFM it’ll use at 120psig). And it’ll be colder (it’ll produce air with a 55°F temperature drop @120psig, vs 54°F @100psig).
EXAIR Vortex Tube Performance Chart – this is where the above – and below – ‘facts & figures’ come from.
  • Decrease Cold Fraction. Depending on the object’s size, material(s) of construction, amount of surface area available for heat transfer, etc., you could improve the cooling rate with lower temperature air, even if there’s less of it. If it’s particularly small in relation to the cold air flow pattern, a portion of that cold air flow might pass by without removing any heat at all. So, decreasing the temperature of the cold air that IS working will increase your rate of heat transfer. This is done by turning the knob of the Temperature Control Valve:
Turning the knob (2) counterclockwise opens the Temperature Control Valve, letting more of the supply flow (1) out of the hot end (3), and less of it to flow to the cold end (4). This also lowers the temperature of the cold air flow.
  • Change the Generator. The Adjustable Spot Cooler comes with a 25 SCFM Generator installed, but 15-R and 30-R Generators are included as well. Replacing the 25 SCFM Generator with a 30 SCFM Generator makes it use 30 SCFM @100psig, but you’ll increase the cold flow from 20 SCFM to 24 SCFM, assuming you leave it set at an 80% Cold Fraction. Keep in mind, though, that you can lower the Cold Fraction to get the same amount of cold flow as you were getting from the 25 SCFM Generator, but now it’ll be colder. If you open the Temperature Control Valve to a 70% Cold Fraction, you’ll reduce the cold flow to 21 SCFM of cold flow, but now it’ll be -1°F.

Everyone here at EXAIR wants you to get the most out of our products. If you’d like to find out more about how to do that, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Adjustable Spot Cooler Keeps Rollers Rolling

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A manufacturer of automotive power transmission shafts was experiencing frequent failure of high pressure plastic rollers on their spin tester.  There are four rollers in a 90° array that center the shaft during spin testing.  They exert a pressure of around 1,500psi onto the shaft while it’s rotating at 1,000rpm.  This generates enough heat to actually melt the rubber coating on rollers, which means stopping testing (which holds up production) while they change out the rollers.  Just for it to start all over again.

This, of course, was an ideal application for a Vortex Tube cooling solution.  They wanted to aim the cold air flow from the dual points of two Model 3925 Adjustable Spot Cooler Systems at four points of the shaft, right where it starts to contact the rollers.

Model 3925 Adjustable Spot Cooler System has a Dual Outlet Hose Kit for distribution of cold air flow to two points.

Thing was, they wanted to mount the Adjustable Spot Coolers where they could have access to the Temperature Control Valve, but the cold air Hose Kit wouldn’t reach the shaft.  So they got a couple of extra sections of the cold air hose…they needed one section of the ‘main’ (shown circled in blue, below) to reach into the test rig’s shroud, and two sections of the ‘branch’ (circled in green) to reach to each roller.

If you need a little extra reach from an Adjustable Spot Cooler or a Cold Gun, the cold air hose segments snap together, and apart, for any length you need.

Now, adding too much hose length will start to put line loss on the cold air flow, and it will pick up heat from the environment.  But if you just need that extra foot of hose to get the job done, this generally works just fine.  The extra foot or so they’ve added (5″ to the main and 6″ to each branch) has solved their problem…they haven’t had to replace a roller since the Adjustable Spot Cooler Systems were installed.

If you’d like to find out more about how EXAIR Vortex Tubes & Spot Cooling Products can prevent heat damage in your operation, give me a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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