Unique Nozzle Application Eliminates Procedure for Tobacco Processing Facility

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I recently worked on a unique application for EXAIR’s Back Blow Nozzle. Generally, these products are used to clean out chips, debris, and coolant from the ID of pipes or tubes. With (3) different sizes available to clean out IDs ranging from ¼”-16” it’s the ideal solution for cleaning out pipes where blowing forward into the pipe won’t work. They’re also available on the end of a Safety Air Gun with extensions up to 72” long, allowing you to get to hard to reach areas.

This particular application, however, was slightly different. The customer has a large machine that rotates a large drum to dry the tobacco, much like a standard clothes dryer. Inside of this drum is a “spray boom” with an angled top designed to prevent the tobacco from settling and sticking in large quantities. At the end of this “spray boom” are Atomizing Nozzles used to apply a cleaning solution after each drying process is completed at the end of the shift.  Unfortunately, the angled design didn’t work quite as well as they’d intended.

The customer needed a solution that could periodically clean off the boom while the drying was in operation. It wasn’t reasonable to do this at the end of the drying process once the majority of material had passed through. The accumulated tobacco on the boom was perfectly usable product and anything stuck after the cleaning operation would have to be thrown out as waste. In order to clean the boom and allow the stuck tobacco to remain as usable product, we needed an automated solution.

The customer installed (4) of the 1006SS Back Blow Nozzles situated around the boom to remove any stuck-on product during the drying process. The results spoke for themselves, at 90 PSIG it removed a 14” wide radius of material from the surface. By implementing the Back Blow Nozzle they were able to reduce waste and eliminate a daily 1-hour long cleaning process to remove stuck on material from the boom.

Just because it’s an outside-the-box application for one of our products, doesn’t mean it won’t work!! With EXAIR’s Unconditional 30-Day Guarantee, you can test any of our stock products out before committing to keep them. Reach out to an Application Engineer today if you have a unique application you’d like to discuss!

Tyler Daniel
Application Engineer
E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_TD

Cleaning Out Pipes, Extrusions and Blind Holes

Look at the picture below of a band saw cutting a piece of tubing.  The amount of debris and coolant that is coating the pipe on the inside diameter and outer diameter is substantial.  Cleaning off the outside of a pipe is fairly easy and straight forward.  Cleaning the ID can be difficult.  This is a single instance where one of the EXAIR Back Blow Air Nozzles can turn a cumbersome job into a quick and easy step in the process.

1 – Metal Cutting Bandsaw

The tubing in the photo appears to be around a 3 or 4″ ID tubing which makes it ideal to be cleaned out internally by the model 1006SS – 1/4″ Back Blow Air Nozzle.  This nozzle is ideal for passage ways ranging from a 7/8″ diameter up to a 4″ diameter.

1006SS – 1/4″ Back Blow Air Nozzle

While cleaning out the short section may be able to be obtained with a forward blowing Safety Air Gun, if this was being cut from a 20′ length of tube it would be difficult to remove the debris from the remnant section of tubing.  The advantage being the debris from the saw cut no longer has to be blown out or left in the longer lengths of the tube.   The Back Blow Air Nozzle can easily be inserted and remove debris back from the saw cutting end.  Lee Evans demonstrates this in a video below.

If you would like to discuss any compressed air application, please feel free to contact an Application Engineer.  We will gladly help you determine which EXAIR product may be right for your application.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

1 – Metal Cutting Bandsaw image – S.J. de Waard, Creative Commons License [CC BY 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)] – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Metal_cutting_bandsaw_(02).JPG

 

Back Blow Nozzles: When Blowing Forward Is Not An Option

Have you ever been in a situation where you need to blow debris or chips out of a pipe or a blind hole?   Maybe it is a pipe you are saw cutting and don’t want to push chips and debris further down the pipe line  You could be trying to clean out a pipe that has debris inside and and can’t push it further down the line because it could damage other system components.  Other customers cleaning out inside diameters of pipe cannot blow all the way out the other side of the pipe due to people being present on that end of the pipe and need to avoid harming them.

The Model 1006SS cleans metal shavings from inside a pipe.
The Model 1006SS cleans metal shavings from inside a pipe.

This is where EXAIR has seen an opening in our product offering and we have filled the void yet again.  We currently offer two sizes of the EXAIR Back Blow Nozzle.   The 1/4″ NPT version, model 1006SS is made to clean out pipes from 7/8″ I.D. to 4″ I.D.   The 1″ NPT version, model 1008SS, is best suited for pipes from 2″ I.D. to 16″ I.D.

Various Views of the Model 1006SS Back Blow Nozzle
Various Views of the Model 1006SS Back Blow Nozzle

 

Airflow Patterns for EXAIR Back Blow Nozzles
Airflow Patterns for EXAIR Back Blow Nozzles

 

So if you have a critical operation or even just a saw cut and don’t want to blow debris further down the pipe, tube or extrusion, contact us about the EXAIR Back Blow Nozzle.

Brian Farno
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF