Tag: adjustable air nozzle

The Important Safety Features of the Flat Super Air Nozzle

Published on by John BallLeave a comment
EXAIR’s Flat Super Air Nozzles have been blowing away the competition since 2003.

The EXAIR Flat Super Air Nozzles are manufactured to blow a wide, forceful stream of air.  Their engineered design creates a high-velocity, laminar air stream with minimal air consumption and low noise levels.  They come in two widths; 1” (25mm) and 2” (51mm).  EXAIR offers a standard Flat Super Air Nozzle and a High Force Flat Super Air Nozzle in two different materials: zinc-aluminum alloy and 316 stainless steel.  And with a metal construction, breakage is not a concern, and performance is not sacrificed even in the harshest of environments.  The unique patented shims inside the EXAIR Flat Super Air Nozzles will give you three improvements to the design and function.  First, they come in different thicknesses to create a wide range of forces.  In conjunction with a regulator, you can “dial” in the correct amount of force from a breeze to a blast without overusing your compressed air system.  The patented design also allows an even flow across the entire width of the air nozzle.  Lastly, the design helps to entrain the free ambient air, so that less compressed air is required, saving you money.  The EXAIR Flat Super Air Nozzles are effective in uniform blowing with safety and efficiency in mind.

To expand more on force adjustments with the Flat Super Air Nozzles, EXAIR has an easy way to change the shim to better suit your application.  You can increase or decrease the force of the nozzle by just removing two screws and changing the thickness of the shim inside.  EXAIR offers a variety pack called a Shim Set to give you a range of forces with the nozzles.  For the standard Flat Super Air Nozzle, they come stock with a 0.015” (0.38mm) shim for both the 1” and 2” sizes.  The corresponding Shim Sets will include a 0.005” (0.13mm), 0.010” (0.25mm), and 0.020” (0.51mm) shim.  The High Force Flat Super Air Nozzles will come standard with a 0.025” (0.64mm) shim, and the Shim Set will include a 0.020” (0.51mm) and a 0.030” (0.76mm) thick shim.  This is a unique feature, as the competitive plastic flat nozzles do not have this option.

What can make the Flat Super Air Nozzles even better?  Flexibility.  My colleague, Jordan Shouse, wrote an article showing these features called “Flat Super Air Nozzles with Accessories to Fit Your Application“.  In addition to the features and benefits, the Flat Super Air Nozzles come with a lip for safety reasons.  Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, has a federal regulation, 29CFR 1910.242(b) to eliminate dead-end pressure.  This states that pressure over 30 PSIG (2 bar) can penetrate the skin and can cause injury or death.  With the safety lip on the Flat Super Air Nozzles, it eliminates that concern, even above 30 PSIG (2 bar) inlet air pressure.  Unlike pipes and copper tubes where the skin can cover and block the exit, the lip on the Flat Super Air Nozzles will allow the air to escape.  So, you cannot block the exit (reference photo above). 

With the EXAIR Flat Super Air Nozzles, you can take advantage of their durability, safety, and efficiency for your blow-off devices.  And just to let you know if you are within the U.S. or Canada, they do come with a 30-day unconditional guarantee to try them out.  If you need any help with drawings, performance, or setup of our Flat Super Air Nozzles, you can speak with an Application Engineer at EXAIR.  We will be happy to help you.

John Ball                                                                                     

Application Engineer

Email: johnball@exair.com

Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

Decibels and How to Calculate

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

Most of us are familiar with the term decibels. We know that it is a measure of sound, and that a larger decibel value means a larger sound. But the details of how they are calculated, or how different values compare to one another are not as widely known.

The first thing to note about sound levels is that they are not measured on a linear scale. Rather, they are measured on a logarithmic scale. This means that decibel values are not as intuitive as maybe we would like. A sound of 20dB is actually 10 times more powerful than a sound of 10dB, and 30dB would be 100 times more powerful than 10dB. If the scale was linear, 20dB and 30dB would be 2 and 3 times more powerful than 10dB (like with mass, for example, 20kg is twice as much mass as 10kg).

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

Image courtesy of OSHA Technical Manual (OTM)
Section III: Chapter 5 Appendix B5

It is important to note that the sound pressure levels calculated with this formula are unweighted. When we want to know how loud something will sound to us, we need to take into account how the human ear perceives different frequencies. The basic effect of this is that low and very high frequencies are given less weight than on the standard decibel scale, but the exact weighting can be seen in the chart to the left. This weighted measurement is denoted as dBA or sometimes dB(A) as opposed to the standard dB for sound pressure levels. Some common sounds and their dBA level can be seen on the chart below:

Due to this logarithmic scale, adding two sounds together can also be quite counter-intuitive as well. Our Model 1100 Super Air Nozzle will produce a sound level of 74 dBA, but two side by side will produce a sound of 78dBA. 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:

Difference Between Two Levels to Be AddedAmount to Add to Higher Level to Find the Sum
0-1 dB3 dB
2-4 dB2 dB
5-9 dB1 dB
10 dB0 dB
From <https://www.osha.gov/otm/section-3-health-hazards/chapter-5>

Now that you know how to calculate sound levels, it is important to understand the dangers inherent in prolonged exposure to high levels of noise. OSHA Standard 29 CFR-1910.95 (a) shows the Maximum Allowable Noise Exposure:

If you would like to find out if you need to address the sound level in your facility, you first need to take a baseline reading of your various processes and devices that are causing the noise. EXAIR’s Sound Level Meter, Model 9104, can help you out. It is an easy-to-use instrument that provides a digital readout of the sound level (so you don’t have to mess with logarithms!) They come with a NIST traceable calibration certificate and will allow you to determine what processes and areas are causing the most trouble.

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

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Photo of Ear auricle Listen by geralt.  Pixabay License

What’s So Great About EXAIR Safety Air Guns?

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment
Cheap to buy; expensive to operate. And it’s loud, to boot.
Precision VariBlast Safety Air Gun offers strong blow off while reducing air use & noise levels.

You can go to almost any hardware store and buy a $10-$20 air blow gun. It’s going to be loud when you pull the trigger, it’s not likely to be compliant with OSHA standards. AND, it’s going to cost more to operate than an engineered product like an EXAIR Safety Air Gun. I actually performed an Efficiency Lab test on such a blow gun recently. First thing I did was look for the manufacturer’s published data on air usage – there was none. Testing with our calibrated rotameter showed that it used 13.5 SCFM @80psig. This same customer had purchased a Model 1809SS-CS VariBlast Precision Safety Air Gun with our Pico Super Air Nozzle installed (and a Chip Shield, which made me really respect their safety game), which uses only 4.9 SCFM @80psig.

The VariBlast Precision Safety Air Guns cost them $136.00 each (2023 pricing). We used a US Department of Energy thumb rule which states that compressed air costs an average of $0.25 per 1,000 Standard Cubic Feet, and calculated that the blow guns they were using cost $158 annually, each, to operate 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, with 3 hours of ‘trigger time’ a day:

13.5 SCFM X 60 min/hr X 3 hrs/day X 5 days/week X 52 weeks/year X $0.25/1,000 SCF = $157.95

Using the same math and substituting the 1809SS-CS’ air use, we see they only cost $58 per year to run:

4.9 SCFM X 60 min/hr X 3 hrs/day X 5 days/week X 52 weeks/year X $0.25/1,000 SCF = $57.33

And, again, since there are 14 of them, the customer is realizing an annual operating cost saving of over $800.00 a year!

At EXAIR, we’re in the business of making sure you get the most out of our products, and your compressed air system. If you’d like to find out what that might mean for you, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Disk Manufacturer Improves Their Heating Process

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

An external hard drive manufacturer was looking to increase their production rate.   One process was inside a clean room where they manufactured aluminum spinning disks.  This process included dipping 2 ½” (64mm) diameter disks into a cleaning solution, then taking them to an oven for drying.  They noticed that this process was a bit too long.  Like with most manufacturing processes, the faster you can go, the more profit you can make.  They saw a blog about another similar dipping process where EXAIR provided a solution called “EXAIR Offers An Easy Way to Improve Your Metal Dipping Process”, so they contacted us. 

EXAIR has many great products that can be used for non-contact wiping.  For this customer, the disks are small enough to use 2” Flat Super Air Nozzles.  They are very efficient as we are able to add free ambient air at a rate up to 25:1, which means that for every one part of compressed air, we can entrain 25 parts of ambient air.  This makes them very efficient as they use less compressed air to generate a good force.  They are also OSHA safe for dead-end pressures and noise levels.  With the EXAIR Super Air Nozzles, we can generate a laminar flow to give an even force across the entire surface.  So, it is easy to set the correct pressure to get an effective and consistent cleaning. 

For the company above, they were using an oven to dry a large rack of disks.  When it comes to drying in an oven, the less liquid that requires evaporation, the faster and more efficient the drying.  So, to increase speeds in this area, the disks need to be very clean and dry after the dipping process.  And since the surface of the disks has to be like glass and defect-free, the best method would be to dry them by a non-contact method.  To add to this automated process, the space was limited between each disk.  A robotic arm would dip six disks at one time, and they had four robotic arms, so they cleaned 24 disks at a time. 

Model 1122SSW

Since this was a clean room, 316 Stainless Steel was required.  EXAIR stocks many types and sizes of 316 stainless steel Super Air Nozzles.  For this application, I recommend the model 1122SSW.  This model number combines the 2” Super Air Nozzle with a Swivel Fitting. 

Swivel Fittings are a great way to securely install and aim the EXAIR nozzles. They are dynamic, as they can be adjusted and set to a flow direction with 50 degrees of movement.  They are compact and made from stainless steel for corrosion resistance.  With the tight space and requirement for precise blowing, the Swivel Fittings were a great addition to include with these EXAIR Air Nozzles.

After installing the Super Air Nozzles and Swivel Fittings on a manifold in their system, they started to see a vast improvement in their process.  The excess drips were removed without surface issues, and they were able to decrease the heating time by 10%.  As an added bonus, the Super Air Nozzles reduced the amount of solution required as the excess went back into the dipping tank.  Less waste and faster production times were the solutions that the EXAIR Super Air Nozzles provided the customer above.  If you have a similar application and want to discuss how we can improve your dipping process, an Application Engineer at EXAIR will be happy to assist. 

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

Photo: Hard Drive Data Store by Christopher Muschitz.  Pixabay Content License