Tag: air blower

EXAIR Air Amplifiers Blow Fans out of the Water!

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

EXAIR’s product line contains many products that can be used for cooling. The focus of this blog will be Super Air Amplifiers. These often times get placed in a head-to-head competition with an electric fan. The best part, they easily come out on top.

When looking at the benefits other than performance and rate of cooling due to air entrainment, many customers prefer the Super Air Amplifier due to the fact there are no moving parts. This comes into play when cooling within in a hard-to-reach area or within a harsh process is needed.  Placing an electric motor with a blade held on by fasteners may not be desirable from a maintenance standpoint. The Super Air Amplifiers do not require electricity and there is not a motor or bearings that would need to be replaced or inspected.

Another benefit is the small footprint of the Super Air Amplifier. This can also be seen within the video below where the Air Amplifier is shown is able to produce 341 SCFM (9,650 SLPM) in amplified airflow. Compared to the fan in the video, the amplifier is less than a 1/4 of the size but outperforms the fan in cooling the metal block! This allows users to place a small unit inside a tight area or chamber that requires large volumes of air.  For instance, a rotomolded part that has a large chamber, and it needs surfaces to be cooled in order for the part to hold its shape from the mold rather than warp.  This can also be coupled with the fact that a Super Air Amplifier can be ducted on either the suction or discharge side in order to retrieve cool air or move the warm air out of the area.

Speaking of warm, the Super Air Amplifiers are also manufactured to withstand up to 275 °F (135 °C) from stock.  Stainless Steel and High-temperature models go well beyond that temp, up to 700 °F (374 °C). Custom-designed (flanges and different materials are common) versions are also available with short lead-times.

If you would like to discuss the benefits to a Super Air Amplifier further, feel free to contact us.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

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Stories From The Field: Automotive Plant Tour

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

Throughout my years I have been in many manufacturing facilities. Oddly enough, I have seen nearly every part of a passenger car manufactured and then fully assembled. The amount of compressed air applications in automotive supplier and manufacturing facilities are tremendous. Here are some stories from just a few we have encountered over the years, and all of them can be found in our Application Database.

Air Wipe – How it works
  1. A component manufacturer, specifically a steering and transmission component manufacturer was having issues with machined parts coming out of a CNC machine with too much oil based cutting fluid on them and not passing inspection process because the oil would throw off the automated measuring system. The part was a splined shaft that the high surface tension oil stayed in the splines. The part was removed from the machine via robotic loader and set onto a fixture. The path to the fixture was outfitted with a Super Air Wipe so the robotic loader could move the part into and out of the air wipes’s airflow and remove the oil. The converging airflow of the Super Air Wipe was ideal to keep the peaks and valleys of the shaft clean of oil and they were able to direct oil back into the cutting machine so no separate collection system was needed.
Robotic Welder fitted with EXAIR Super Air Wipe

2. A seat bracket manufacturer had issues protecting the lenses on their vision systems from welding spatter. They were again able to reduce the replacement / repair downtime by installing a 9″ Super Air Wipe in front of the robotic mounted lens and keep the spatter / fumes from ever making it to the lens, resulting in expanded run times between repair / downtime.

Cooling with Air Amplifiers

3. A forging company manufacturing the pistons was having issues reducing the temperature of the pistons as they were assembled to the connecting rods. The solution for them was to install a series of Super Air Amplifiers over the fixtured, indexing line and at each dwell station a Super Air Amplifier would activate and cool down the assembly by moving large volumes of ambient air mixed with small amounts of compressed air onto the surfaces.

4. An automotive manufacturer had issues with stamping shavings and welding debris staying on the surface of parts and fixtures resulting in rework and defective parts. Implementing a series of Super Air Nozzles, and Super Air Knives resulted in debris removal that saved tooling rework as well as production reject parts.

5. Another automotive / recreational vehicle manufacturer needed help with their torture test machine for suspension components. They were utilizing fans to try and keep shock sensors cool and replicate air movement. electric fans were not able to provide a focused airflow and so enter the Super Air Amplifiers. These have also been utilized on engine torture test machines.

1 – Chevrolet Corvette C7 2014 – LT1 Engine Testing on Dyno

These are just a select few of the actual applications that I have actually help with over the course of the years. As a whole, we have helped endless number of automotive industry applications. It doesn’t matter if you are in the automotive industry or just a garage tinkerer, contact and Application Engineer and let us help you with your point of use compressed air application today.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

1 – Autoblog_gr; Chevrolet Corvette C7 2014 – LT1 Engine Testing on Dyno – retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3h8imnOPwU on 8/31/2022

Air Amplifiers to Increase Volume of Airflow Aid in Cooling, Cleaning, Circulation, Venting

Published on by bdwagesLeave a comment

Air Amplifiers are a perfect solutions for utilizing air for Venting, Exhausting, Cooling, Drying, or Cleaning with no moving parts. As the name implies, these tools produce a high volume and a high velocity of outlet flow. These are very quiet, efficient and can amplify your air consumption up to 25 times… Here is a great diagram and description of exactly how these work:

Air Amplifiers use the Coanda Effect to generate high flow with low consumption.

As you can see, these fine pieces of engineering genius have no moving parts, and require no electricity. You can easily control the flow, force and velocity by opening or closing the air gap (fixed with a shim) and regulating the the supply air. These can also be ducted on each end to either pull in or remove air or fumes from one room or area to another.

SUPER?? What makes our Super Air Amplifier super? I’m glad you asked. The Super Air Amplifier has a patented design that uses a special shim to maintain critical position of the component parts. This results in a precise amount of compressed air to be released at exact intervals towards the center of the Super Air Amplifier. These jets of air create a constant, high velocity outlet flow across the entire cross-sectional area. This balances out the airflow to maximum performance, this simultaneously minimizes wind shear, causing sound levels up to 3 x’s quieter than other comparable air movers. To completely understand how much air this Super Air Amplifier amplifies (try saying that fast 5 times), please see the below chart.

As you can see, the amplification ratio is between 12 and 25 x the amount of air consumed. For the right applications, these are game changers… Pro tip – notice that even the highest level still falls under OSHA guidelines for noise!!

If you have any questions, or would like to discuss your application directly, please reach out today. We would love to speak with you, and help wherever we can.

Thank you for stopping by,

Brian Wages

Application Engineer

EXAIR Corporation
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Coanda Profiles: Who, What and How

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

Henri Coanda was a Romanian aeronautical engineer most known for his work developing what is today known as the Coanda effect. The Coanda effect is the propensity of a fluid to adhere to the walls of a curved surface. A moving stream of fluid will follow the curvature of the surface rather than continuing to travel in a straight line.  This effect is used in the design of an airplane wing to produce lift. The top of the wing is curved whereas the bottom of the wing remains straight. As the air comes across the wing, it adheres to the curved surface, causing it to slow down and create a higher pressure on the underside of the wing. This  is referred to as lift and is what allows an airplane to fly.

The Coanda effect is also the driving force behind many of EXAIR’s Intelligent Compressed Air Products. Throughout our catalog and website you’ll see us talking about air amplification ratios. EXAIR products are designed to take advantage of this phenomenon and entrain ambient air into the primary air stream. Compressed air is ejected through the small orifices creating air motion in their surroundings. Using just a small amount of compressed air as the power source, Super Air Knives, Air Nozzles, and Air Amplifiers all draw in “free” ambient air amplifying both the force and the volume of airflow.

Entrainment
EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Products such as (left to right) the Air Wipe, Super Air Knife, Super Air Nozzle, and Air Amplifier are engineered to entrain enormous amounts of air from the surrounding environment.

Super Air Knives provide the greatest amount of air amplification at a rate of 40:1, one part being the compressed air supply and 40 parts ambient air from the environment. The design of the Super Air Knife allows air to be entrained at the top and bottom of the knife, maximizing the overall volume of air. Super Air Nozzles and Super Air Amplifiers also use this effect to provide air amplification ratios of up to 25:1, depending on the model.

HowItWorks
Air Amplifiers use the Coanda Effect to generate high flow with low consumption.

The patented shim design of the Super Air Amplifier allows it to pull in dramatic amounts of free surrounding air while keeping sound levels as low as 69 dBA at 80 psig! The compressed air adheres to the Coanda profile of the plug and is directed at a high velocity through a ring-shaped nozzle. It adheres to the inside of the plug and is directed towards the outlet, inducing a high volume of surrounding air into the primary air stream.

Utilizing the Coanda effect allows for massive compressed air savings. If you would like to discuss further how this effect is applied to our Super Air Knives, Air Amplifiers, and Air Nozzles give us a call. We’d be happy to help you replace an inefficient solution with an Engineered Intelligent Compressed Air Product.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

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