When you get your Super Air Knife, most applications are going to be ready to go right out of the box! Just supply compressed air to the correct number of ports, mounting it into position and turning the air on! But every once in a while, you need to tweak the Air Knife position, force, flow in order to get the results you are looking for in your application! Don’t worry, though we have you covered!
Shims allow us to control the volume of air that comes out of the air knife. Like all things beautiful, they come in different colors and sizes. For our Super Air Knives, these come installed with our form stock red shim that is 0.002″ thick. For a thinner selection, we offer our Amber shim that is only 0.001″. If you prefer this to be a little thicker, we offer our tan shim that is 0.003″. And a green shim that comes in at 0.004″ thick. One of the greatest features of these Shim Sets is that you can take advantage of more than one shim at a time, giving you up to a 0.008″ thick air gap for maximum airflow.
Pressure Regulators “dial in” performance to get the job done without using more air than necessary.
The best pressure at which to set your system is the level where your production can operate efficiently and effectively without waste. There is no right pressure that depends on your operations and tools. You may have 90 to 100 PSIG at the wall, but you may only need to run the knife at 40 PSIG to get the desired result. So, reducing pressure and saving that compressed air volume will save your company money in the long run!
The Universal Air Knife Mounting System – it’s a quick and convenient way to support an Air Knife. It’s especially beneficial to precisely position the Super Air Knife for optimum performance within your application! Air Knives under 24″ need one. 24″ – 54″ need two, 55″-71″ use 3, 75″-95″ use 4 and 96″ and over use 5 to fully support the Air Knives’ weight!
These are just three of the many accessories we offer with our Air Knives! If you have any questions, or want to purchase some of these fine accessories, please don’t hesitate to reach out today.
Here at EXAIR we are very proud of our Intelligent Compressed Air Products. We can spend a lot of time talking about our favorites (mine is the Vortex Tube). We have written many blogs about the advantages – no moving parts, little to no maintenance, meeting or exceeding OSHA safety standards for noise or dead end pressure. One thing we don’t talk as much about are the accessories that go along with and complement our products.
From left to right; a few value added accessories for your Vortex Tube: Hot Muffler, Cold Muffler, Automatic Drain Filter Separator, Oil Removal Filter, and Solenoid Valve/Thermostat Kit.
Some of the most commonly used accessories are our compressed air Filters and Regulators. We would recommend the use of these with all of our products (or even with products that aren’t even ours). The Filter Separator will remove water, dirt and rust from your compressed air system. The 5-micron filter element will keep contaminants from plugging or damaging your compressed air product. An Oil Removal Filter (always placed downstream of our Filter Separator) will provide even finer filtration by removing oil and solid particulate using a 0.03-micron element. Our Pressure Regulators will enable you to select the operating pressure. At EXAIR we always recommend operating at the minimum pressure required to get the job done. Pressure Regulators allow you to do that, saving on unnecessary air consumption and allowing for dialing in the performance of EXAIR products within an application.
For some of our products, we have accessories made specifically for them. For use with our Line Vacs we have Line Vac Hose. We have Thermostats and Solenoid Valves to pair with our Cabinet Coolers, and for our Vortex Tubes we would recommend our Mufflers. For our Air Knives we have several great offerings: If you need an easy and reliable way to mount your Air Knife, then our Universal Air Knife Mounting System is what you are looking for. If your application requires something longer than our stock Knives, or perhaps you need to control certain sections of the air flow independently, then our Coupling Bracket Kits are the perfect fit. If you want to make plumbing your Air Knife easy, take a look at our Air Knife Plumbing Kits. They can be used for all Air Knives longer than 24″.
If you need to plumb many of our other Intelligent Compressed Air Products, then we have a selection of compressed air hoses and fittings that will make life easier. Our Coiled Hoses pair well with our Safety Air Guns, allowing you to move more freely while operating. Our Compressed Air Hoses are commonly used with our Industrial Housekeeping products to give the drum and dolly the reach needed.
Whatever your application’s need is, or the product you’re looking for, we certainly have a range of complimentary accessory products that will make installation and adjustment easier. If you have any questions about these, or any other EXAIR product, feel free to contact us.
EXAIR’s Super Air Knives are the ideal fit for any application requiring a laminar “curtain” of air for blowoff purposes. The high-velocity airflow does an excellent job of cleaning off surfaces, cooling, and drying in a wide variety of applications throughout industry. These products are engineered to provide a consistent and reliable force across the full length of the knife, ensuring repeatable performance in any application.
The Super Air Knife utilizes a source of compressed air to create a laminar sheet of high velocity air. This supplied compressed air mixes with ambient air that is entrained into the primary airstream. The Super Air Knife entrains ambient air at a rate of 40:1, making it VERY effective for a variety of drying, cleaning, and cooling applications. Available in lengths ranging from 3”-108” and in a variety of different materials of construction, there’s a Super Air Knife available for just about any application. Any time you have product moving along a conveyor that needs to be cleaned, dried, or cooled off, a Super Air Knife is the ideal fit.
The key to any successful Super Air Knife application is ensuring proper plumbing is assembled to the Air Knife as well as the correct mounting angle for the blowoff. This was the case in a recent application I assisted with for a company who deals in packaging raw foods using a method to increase longevity. The foods are bagged where they’re submerged in a water tank and exposed to high pressures. This process results in a significantly greater ability to preserve the quality of the food and keep any bacteria at bay for longer than just simply sealing the bags alone.
Once the products emerge from the water bath, they’re placed on a conveyor to dry. EXAIR’s Super Air Knives are being used to blowoff any remaining water from the package before they’re boxed. Looking to speed up the process a bit as they had residual water remaining on the packages that was being dried manually, they reached out to EXAIR for some assistance in improving the overall result.
As you can see in the photo above, the knife has been installed blowing directly down onto the conveyor. When positioned in this way, the product is only in contact with the high velocity airstream for a brief moment. For any blowoff operation where products are traveling along a conveyor, we want to angle the knife against the direction of travel to maximize time in contact. By blowing against the direction of travel, we maximize the contact time and can dry the packaged food far more effectively.
A situation that originally started with the customer looking to either increase air consumption by adding thicker shims to their existing Air Knife or adding new Air Knives altogether was solved by simply adjusting the current angle of their existing installation.
In doing so, they saved what would’ve been unnecessary compressed air usage and were able to immediately case pack the food in boxes once it made it to the end of the conveyor. If you have an existing EXAIR product that you’d like assistance with, EXAIR’s team of Application Engineers is ready to take your call. Reach out to us today, and we’ll be happy to help you to determine the best products for your application!
EXAIR has been manufacturing Intelligent Compressed Air® products since 1983. In the beginning, the Standard Air Knives and Full Flow Air Knives were very effective at that time. But as leaders in this industry, EXAIR did not want to stop there. We were able to engineer a more efficient, more powerful, and much quieter air knife, the Super Air Knife. In this blog, I will discuss the features and benefits that the Super Air Knives can offer.
Bernoulli’s principle explains how a high velocity fluid can generate a low pressure. The EXAIR Super Air Knife creates a high velocity air stream to produce that low pressure to entrain ambient air. What does this mean for you? It will save you money by using less compressed air. The mass of the ambient air is added to the compressed air stream to give it a strong blowing force. The Super Air Knife has an amplification ratio of 40:1, which means that for every 1 part of compressed air, 40 parts of ambient air are drawn into the air stream. Ambient air is free. Compressed air is expensive. EXAIR was able to engineer a design to use Bernoulli’s principle to make one of the most efficient air knives in the marketplace.
What else makes EXAIR unchallenged? We manufacture and stock the widest range of lengths and materials. To start, EXAIR has Super Air Knives ranging from 3” to 108” (76 mm to 2,743 mm) in three different materials; aluminum, 303 stainless steel, and 316/316L stainless steel. EXAIR also offers Super Air Knives in PVDF material with Hastelloy hardware for chemical resistant applications from 3” to 54” (76 mm to 1,372 mm). Depending on the temperature requirement, chemical resistance, OSHA and FDA regulations, or application details, we probably will have one on the shelf for you. If EXAIR does not have it, we can make special air knives in different lengths and materials to best fit your application. You can read more about specials HERE.
Some interesting features of the Super Air Knives are as follows:
They have a compact design that can fit into tight places for blowing and cooling. The footprint is very small compared to a blower-air knife system.
They do not have any moving parts to wear or maintenance to do. They only need clean compressed air to work.
They blow a laminar air stream which reduces noise levels and creates a consistent force along the entire length. An even force will give you tighter control for blowing applications which will cut compressed air usage, unlike the inconsistent and turbulent air flows caused by drilled pipes.
To adjust the force and air use, this can be easily controlled. For fine adjustments, a pressure regulator can be used. For coarse adjustments, the EXAIR Super Air Knives have an advantage with replaceable shims. The Aluminum version uses colored plastic shims for visual verification. They come in stock with a 0.002” (0.05 mm) red shim installed. We have other thicknesses in our Shim Sets, which include a 0.001” (0.03 mm), 0.003” (0.08 mm), and a 0.004” (0.10 mm) colored amber, green, and tan respectively. The Stainless Steel Super Air Knives come with a stainless steel shim for higher temperatures and chemical resistance. Stock units have a 0.002” (0.05 mm) shim as well. The Shim Sets come with three additional 0.002” (0.05 mm) shims to stack. Similarly, the PVDF Super Air Knives use a PTFE shim for maximum chemical resistance. It is also 0.002” (0.05 mm) thick, and there are three more shims in the Shim Set. This unique feature of using shims allows for the most flexibility in creating forces for different applications, ranging from a blast to remove rocks from a conveyor to a breeze for light duty work.
Super Air Knife Kits include a Shim Set, Filter Separator, and Pressure Regulator.
We also offer the Super Air Knives in kits as a more complete system. The kits include a filter, regulator and the above-mentioned shim set. The filter removes the debris and water from the compressed air line to optimize the performance of the air knife as well as to keep your product clean. The regulator is used to make the “fine” adjustment to the blowing force, while the shim set is used as the “coarse” adjustment. EXAIR sells this kit as one model number for simple ordering, and the accessories are properly sized to not hinder the performance of the Super Air Knife.
To optimize the system even more, EXAIR offers a Deluxe Kit for the Aluminum and Stainless Steel models. This includes the accessories in the kit above, plus an Electronic Flow Control, or EFC. This exclusive instrument uses a photoelectric eye to start a timing sequence to control a solenoid valve. So, when a part is not in front of the Super Air Knife for cleaning or cooling, the compressed air is turned off. This will save you even more money and maximize your efficiency by only using air when needed.
For longer Super Air Knives, EXAIR can install a Plumbing Kit, to help attach your compressed air to the Air Knife. They are designed to help lessen the time for installation as well as to properly supply compressed air equally along the entire length, specifically for 24” (610 mm) and longer. We can offer the Plumbing Kit separately if you find that it could benefit your fabricators during installation. EXAIR also offers a Coupling Kit for the Aluminum and Stainless Steel versions. If you need to extend past the 108” (2,743 mm) width, the Coupling Kit is designed to mount Super Air Knives together at the ends. You will still get that consistent blowing force without any gap. Another helpful accessory is the Universal Air Knife Mounting System. It has a bracket and an articulated arm that can reach up to 30” (762 mm). With this system, you can position your air knife securely and precisely in any orientation. It attaches easily to your Super Air Knife and gives you the flexibility to maximize the blowing effect on your target.
Complimentary gift, model 1210
With today’s cost of making compressed air, it is important to use it as efficiently as possible. The Standard and Full Flow Air Knives would be good options to use. But the best way to conserve is with the Super Air Knife. In the U.S. and Canada, EXAIR offers a 30-day unconditional guarantee on our cataloged items, so you can try them out. You can see for yourself how effective these compressed air guns can be. If you have any questions about the Super Air Knife or if you would like to discuss an application, you can contact an Application Engineer at EXAIR. We will be glad to help you. And until December 31st, 2023, EXAIR is offering a free Soft Grip Safety Air Gun, a $115.00 value, as a complimentary gift for qualifying online Super Air Knife purchases.
John Ball Application Engineer Email: johnball@exair.com Twitter: @EXAIR_jb
