Tag: air jet nozzle

EXAIR’s Super Air Nozzles

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

Have you ever walked into a manufacturing facility during lunch, and it sounds like you’ve walked onto a plane full of snakes…? That’s a common issue across every sector of manufacturing. Compressed air is used for blowing off, cooling and cleaning everywhere you look. Below are the six steps to optimize your compressed air system. But today, let’s jump to step number 3 and see how upgrading those blow-offs with an engineered Safety Air Nozzle can help add to your bottom line.

If you’ve been tasked with reducing operating costs in your plant, upgrading your blow offs to EXAIR’s Engineered Air Nozzles & Jets might be just the ticket. When replacing a homemade or inefficient solution, EXAIR’s Super Air Nozzles can save you as much as 80% of your compressed air usage.

An open copper pipe or tube, even if “flattened” as we’ll commonly see, wastes an excessive amount of compressed air. This wasted compressed air can create problems in the facility due to unnecessarily high energy costs and the pressure drop that can be experienced affecting other processes. In addition to simply using too much compressed air, an open pipe or tube will often produce sound levels in excess of 100 dBA. At these sound levels, according to OSHA, permanent hearing damage will occur in just 2 hours of exposure.

Crushed open pipe in the top right corner

By simply replacing the open tubes and pipe with an EXAIR Super Air Nozzle, you can quickly reduce air consumption AND reduce the sound level. Sound level isn’t the only thing an OSHA inspector is going to be concerned about regarding an open pipe blowoff. In addition, OSHA 1910.242(b) states that a compressed air nozzle used for blowoff or cleaning purposes cannot be dead-ended when used at pressures in excess of 30 psig. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to use an air gun with 30 psig fed to it, but the effectiveness of it is dramatically reduced. This is why there needs to be a device installed that’ll prevent it from being dead-ended so that you can operate at a higher pressure.

EXAIR’s Super Air Nozzles are designed with fins that serve two purposes. They help to entrain ambient air from the environment, allowing us to maximize the force and flow from the nozzle but keeping the compressed air consumption minimal. In addition, these fins are what prevent the nozzle openings from being completely blocked off. Using an OSHA-compliant compressed air nozzle for all points where a blow off operation is being performed should be a priority. Each individual infraction will result in a fine if you’re unfortunate enough to be the victim of an unannounced OSHA inspection.

If you think a few Engineered Safety air nozzles will help add to your bottom line, give us a call. We have a full team of application engineers ready and willing to get you a solution to make your facility safer and save money!

Jordan Shouse, CCASS

Application Engineer

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VariBlast Safety Air Gun Overview

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

After mowing the lawn, I always blow the driveway & sidewalk off with a leaf blower. Then, before pulling the riding lawn mower back into the garage, I blow off the deck with the leaf blower too, and it always looks like it does a great job. The other day, though, I had to replace the drive belts, so I removed the deck and found an awful lot of grass trimmings had accumulated in the inner recesses. No matter how much air my leaf blower moves (and it moves a LOT), I would have needed a much more focused flow to get into some of those tight spaces.

Situations like this are EXACTLY what EXAIR Safety Air Guns – especially the VariBlast Precision and Compact models – are made for. Consider:

  • Tight, focused flow – the VariBlast Precision Safety Air Guns can be fitted with our three smallest, most focused Super Air Nozzles – Atto, Pico, and Nano:
Not only do they create the most focused airflow patterns, these Super Air Nozzles are also small enough to fit in pretty tight quarters themselves.
  • Hard-hitting force – VariBlast Compact Safety Air Guns can also be fitted with the Atto, Pico, or Nano Super Air Nozzles for the tightest airflow patterns, as well as several others if higher flow & force are required.
For more aggressive applications, VariBlast Compact Safety Air Guns with 1″ High Power Flat Super Air Nozzles can apply up to 1 pound of force.
  • Extended reach – the VariBlast Precision Safety Air Guns are available with 12″ and 20″ 316SS extensions, and the VariBlast Compact Safety Air Guns can come with straight rigid aluminum extensions up to 72″ long.
  • Chip Shields – regardless of whether you need extensions for extra reach, these can all be supplied with Chip Shields. These are especially useful (and are included as standard) on the VariBlast Compact Safety Air Guns with Back Blow Air Nozzles.
Atto Back Blow Air Nozzles can blow out recesses or holes as small as 1/4″ in diameter.
  • Operator control – this is the key feature of the VariBlast models. Most handheld airguns have spool valve-type triggers that are really just on/off operation. They can offer some crude amount of throttling, but the variable pull trigger of the VariBlast Safety Air Gun provides precise control, and they’re ergonomic to boot. Here’s a short video that shows just how precise the control is with a VariBlast Precision Safety Air Gun.

Compressed air isn’t cheap, and if you use cheap, non-engineered blow-offs, you’re going to pay WAY more to operate them than you have to. If you want to find out how the VariBlast Precision or Compact Safety Air Guns – or any EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Products – can help you get the most out of your compressed air system, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Let’s Build A Blowoff System!

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

EXAIR makes a wide variety of Intelligent Compressed Air Products that can be used for blowoff applications. The first step is to consider what size, and shape, the airflow pattern needs to be. If it’s a smooth, flat surface, our Air Knives are ideal for that. If a more directed, focused stream of air is required, we have Air Nozzles, Air Jets, and Air Amplifiers. And if it’s for statically charged debris, we can put Ionizers on Air Knives (Super Ion Air Knives), Air Nozzles (Intellistat Ion Air Nozzles), Air Jets (Gen4 Ion Air Jets) and Air Amplifiers (Gen4 Ion Air Cannons.)

If you navigate the EXAIR website to our Blowoff Kits, you’ll see that we can provide a number of our quiet, safe, and efficient Air Nozzles with Magnetic Bases and/or Stay Set Hoses for a quick & easy Blowoff System. In addition to the half dozen or so systems that are specifically called out, you can also put together your own setup that best suits your application. Here’s how:

Example: Model 1100-9412 is two Super Air Nozzles on a Dual Outlet Magnetic Base with 12″ Stay Set Hoses.

If you’d like to discuss a blowoff application – regardless of size or shape – give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Who Wants to Save on Compressed Air?

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

At EXAIR we pride ourselves on helping our customers optimize their compressed air usage. Our intelligent compressed air products are engineered to be quiet and efficient, saving you on compressed air consumption. This is just one of the six steps that we recommend in order to optimize your compressed air system.

The first step we would recommend is to measure your air consumption. If you are going to attempt to reduce air consumption in your facility, it is necessary to know what is using it. If you know the consumption of your compressed air-operated products, you can make note of this. A more comprehensive solution would be to install some of our Digital Flowmeters in branch lines in your facility. The flow data provided by this will help you narrow down the high consumption areas and processes.

The second step we would suggest is to find and fix leaks. Our Ultrasonic Leak Detector is perfect for this. According to the Compressed Air and Gas Institute, leaks should not exceed 5-10% of your system’s air supply (we would obviously want 0%, but realistically this is unachievable). However, it is not uncommon to see leaks account for over 30% of many facilities’ compressed air supply being lost through leakage. That’s a potential for a 25% gain in compressed air supply!

The third step would be to upgrade your blowoff, cooling and drying operations using engineered compressed air products. All of EXAIR’s products, like our Super Air Knives, or Super Air Nozzles, are designed with efficiency in mind. Upgrading to an efficient EXAIR product is going to reduce your consumption, sometimes dramatically so!

The fourth step is to turn off your compressed air when not in use. This may sound obvious, but it is not uncommon for compressed air products to be left running continuously. We offer many solutions here, from a simple ball valve (found in many of our Drum Vac Kits), to a solenoid valve (found in our Cabinet Cooler Systems), to our Electronic Flow Controllers – combining a solenoid valve and photoelectric sensor.

The fifth step would be to use intermediate storage near the point of use. If you are controlling your compressed air usage through the use of valves and controls, then your consumption won’t be constant. This fluctuation in demand can be evened out with the use of secondary storage, like our Model 9500-60 Receiver Tank. This will ensure you have the volume and pressure when and where you need it.

Finally, our sixth step is to control the operating pressure. More specifically, to reduce the pressure to the minimum required to get the job done. Simply installing a pressure regulator at the point of use will lead to big savings.

If you would like to start optimizing your compressed air system, then give me a call!

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

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