Tag: air nozzles

Why Do We Guarantee?

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

We hear about all kinds of applications when working with customers. For many of them, there is an obvious solution. Your electrical panel is overheating – an EXAIR Cabinet Cooler is what you are looking for. If you’re experiencing static on an assembly line – a Gen4 static elimination product is what you need. If you’re trying to blowoff excess water from an extruded pipe, then a Super Air Wipe is the right solution.

There are many applications however, where the solution isn’t as obvious. We know that our products can help, but with the sheer number of variables there isn’t a way to plug everything into a formula and say that this will be the outcome. The end result needs to be found through testing. This is where EXAIR’s 30-day unconditional guarantee comes in. All of our stock, catalog products come with this guarantee. After purchasing one of these products, you have a month to put it through its paces; adjust the angle, adjust the operating pressure, swap out shims. If you are able to find the right conditions to solve your problem, then great! If not, we’ll take it back and issue full credit! You’re only responsible for the shipping to get it back to us.

Line Vac test

A popular application where testing is essential is with our Line Vacs. There are multiple variables at play: the bulk density of the material, the size of the material, is it abrasive?, the rate of conveyance desired, the distance needed to convey – both vertical and horizontal. We’re pretty good at getting you in the ballpark of which model will work best using the data we’ve found from our controlled in-house testing. But ultimately, to know exactly how our Line Vac will perform with your material, it needs to be hooked up. When you purchase from us, you have 30 days to do that risk-free.

At EXAIR, we want to ensure you are getting the best possible solution. Our 30-day unconditional guarantee is one way that we make that a reality. If you would like to discuss how our products can help with your application, give us a call!

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

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Compressed Air Safety Do’s and Don’t’s

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

DO take compressed air safety seriously. We are all familiar with the importance of safety. Almost every company has some form of annual safety training. One of the common themes of these kinds of training is that it is not just some people’s responsibility, but that it is everyone’s responsibility. Here at EXAIR we take safety seriously. All of our products are engineered with safety in mind – we even have a line of products with ‘safety’ in the name – Safety Air Guns. This is very important, as working with compressed air can present some health risks if not used properly.

OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is an organization here in the United States that enforces governmental directives for safe and healthy working environments. They can also enforce these directives with heavy fines for violations.  With compressed air, the two most common violations are air guns and blowoff devices are described in 29CFR 1910.242(b) for dead-end pressure/chip shielding and 29CFR 1910.95(a) for maximum allowable noise exposure.

The first regulation – 29CFR 1910.242(b) – references the use of hand-held tools. DON’T use a blowoff device at more than 30psig if the compressed air can be dead-ended. If the compressed air has no other path to escape, it can penetrate the skin, causing an air embolism. A common and simple solution is to cross-drill a hole to allow an alternate path. This could create other safety issues, as we will discuss later. EXAIR’s nozzles are designed with fins which allow the air to escape and not be blocked by your skin.  So, you can safely use the EXAIR Super Air Nozzles above 30psig.

The second regulation – 29CFR 1910.95(a) – references the maximum allowable sounds level an individual should be exposed to. DON’T allow an operator to be exposed to excessive sound levels for too long. This is where the cross-drilled nozzle falls short. Although safe from dead-end pressure, the sound produced by the turbulent airflow is very loud. The engineered design of EXAIR’s nozzles entrain the surrounding air into a laminar flow, which is much quieter. Our Model 1210 Safety Air Gun (which uses our Model 1100 Nozzle) only has a sounds level of 74dBA, which is comfortably under the noise exposure limit for 8 hours.

If you want to take compressed air safety seriously, then DO use EXAIR’s line of safe, quiet and efficient Safety Air Guns and Air Nozzles. If you would like to discuss this, or any of your other compressed air application needs, then give me a call!

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

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Banner image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Dead End image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

Aluminum Smelting: Cooling the Hot Spots!

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

Aluminum smelting is an important process to change alumina ore into aluminum, a lightweight metal.  This process uses high heat for a period of time to separate the oxygen from the alumina.  The temperature can reach over 1000oF (538oC) to cause this separation.  As a reference, two pounds (0.9 Kg) of alumina ore is needed to make one pound (0.45 Kg) of aluminum.  Inside the ovens and exhaust ducts, they are lined with a cement brick to contain the heat and fumes.  Over time, the brick can get weak and have hot spots.  Once the brick is compromised, the system has to be shut down for days to replace the brick.  This is an expensive process and time-consuming.  To help reduce the hot spots and extend the life of the brick, the smelting company was using ¼” copper tubes to blow compressed air to reduce the heat.  This was costing the company a lot of money to operate; so, they contacted EXAIR for a better solution.     

They may be inefficient, but they sure are loud…

EXAIR has been manufacturing intelligent compressed air products since 1983.  And one thing that we know how to do is to save money on compressed air blow-off applications.  For this company above, they had 90 open pipes throughout their plant.  I was able to do a quick calculation for this customer to compare the copper tube to a Super Air Nozzle.  A ¼” copper tube will use roughly 33 SCFM (935 SLPM) of compressed air at 80 PSIG (5.5 bar).  As a replacement nozzle in a hot area, EXAIR recommended a model 1100SS Super Air Nozzle which will use 14 SCFM (396 SLPM) at 80 PSIG (5.5 bar).  With a simple connection, they could mount the ¼” NPT Super Air Nozzle at the end of each tube.  With the cost to make compressed air at $0.25/1,000 ft3, we can calculate the air savings.    

33 SCFM (copper tube) – 14 SCFM (Model 1100) = 19 SCFM savings

The operation for the smelting plant was 24 hours and 7 days a week.  The amount of savings is as follows:

19 ft3/min * 60 min/hr * 24 hr/day * 7 days/week * $0.25/1,000 ft3 = $47.88 savings per week per nozzle.

Since they have 90 nozzles, this would save them $4,309.20 each week! 

How can we do this?  With cooling capacities, it is dependent on the mass of air that can be moved.  With our Super Air Nozzles, we are near an amplification ratio of 25:1.  This means that for every one part of compressed air, we can entrain 25 parts of ambient air.  Also, with our Super Air Nozzles, we can generate a laminar air flow which has a velocity profile that has the air moving in the same direction.  An open pipe has turbulent flow, which means that the velocity is traveling in different directions and not working together.  And the amplification ratio is very low.  I did a demonstration to illustrate this effect here: Video Blog: Laminar and Turbulent Flows.  The large volume of air creates good cooling without using too much compressed air to reduce the hot spot temperatures.  In keeping the temperature under control, they could continue operations and lessen the concern for untimely shut-downs and costly maintenance.

By using air to cool, you can do it safely and efficiently.  As a benefit, the Super Air Nozzles reduced the noise level as well.  Saving a lot of money; having an effective way to reduce stress on the cement bricks; and reducing the noise nuisance were great replacements for this company.  If you would like to speak about cooling applications, you can contact an Application Engineer; even something as large as a smelting oven.

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

Application Spotlight! – Back Blow Nozzle!

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

Last month I started doing an application spotlight. In these, I’m going to pull from the dozens of phone calls or emails and walk you through how we on the Application Engineering team select a product for a specific application!

A customer called in with a tricky application where they need to keep the ID of a bearing cool. Seemed like a simple application, something where an air amplifier or a Super Air knife would be ideal!

But this wasn’t a simple application. They were heating the OD up, so they could add a surface treatment. The radiating heat was causing the inner race to slightly deform, so they wanted to cool it down, while not interrupting the heating taking place on the OD. And an air amplifier or knife would cool the entire bearing down with its larger pattern of air.

So we had to come up with an off-standard use for one of our products, and the first thought was our Back Blow Nozzles. The bearing ID was 2″, so we went with a 1006SS as it’s rated from 7/8″ to 4″. It was located, so the air stream was aimed downward. The airflow was hitting the ID and bouncing off the plate that the bearing sat on and worked its way out the top. This limited the air flow around the OD to basically zero, so it didn’t affect the coating process! Below is a quick sketch I did with the customer on the phone. It shows a section of the bearing and the air flow that would come from the back blow nozzle!

In more common applications, such as blowing chips or debris forward out of a pipe, our selection of forward blowing nozzles work quite well. However, this may not always be possible. The pipe may be long, making it impossible to push the debris all the way down the pipe. The other end of the pipe may not be open or there could be some process or area to which it is attached that would become contaminated if debris were blown in that direction. In any of these scenarios, a Back Blow Nozzle is the right tool for the job. An array of holes located around the outside diameter of the Back Blow Nozzle head provides a powerful 360° airflow pattern that will pull and clear out any leftover coolant or chips ahead of it within a pipe from a machining or any other process.

From the easy ID blow out application to the tricky “off book” applications, the application engineering team here at EXAIR are here to help you select the right product for you!

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

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Bearing Photo courtesy of Patrick via creative commons