Tag: blower

Cleaning Honeycomb with a Super Ion Air Knife

Published on by Dave WoernerLeave a comment

This week I worked with a gentleman, who was having a problem cleaning a honeycomb web after a sawing operation. The honeycomb was a paper based material, and the sawing operation would create a large amount of dust. This dust filled his honeycomb, which made the product appear inconsistent to his customer on incoming inspections. This was leading to the customer questioning the quality of the product.

honeycomb

His process featured a blower that was incredibly noisy and still left some material on the product.  During the winter, the problem was further exasperated by the dry air, which led to the dust being statically charged and clinging to the honeycomb even more.  In spite of his quality and production issues, the customer was looking to expand his production to meet demand. The blower he was using had been custom-made for his machine, so he was open to any ideas. Also, the blower had no way of removing static electricity from the material.

I recommended he use an 84″ Super Ion Air Knife to clean his 80″ honeycomb web. The customer mounted the air knife perpendicular to the surface of the honeycomb 4″ away from the surface. One of my concerns with the operation was creating even flow. To do this on a long span, I recommended he use have the plumbing kit installed at EXAIR, which allows the air knife to create an even flow along the length of the knife y preventing any restrictions which may occur from poorly sized inlet fittings, hose or tube.  The Super Ion Air Knife cleaned the honey comb with ease, while maintaining a quiet 69 dBA, and without the expensive maintenance required by the blower.

PlumbingKit-bg

Dave Woerner
Application Engineer
Davewoerner@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_DW

Super Air Knife Replaces Blower Driven Knife

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

This past week I spoke with a customer who had a blower driven air knife.  They had a slot cast extruder line that was making something similar to a plastic cling wrap.  The process had a blower driven knife which was used to blow the product after it was extruded onto a chilled roll in order to cool the product and convey it to the next point in the process.  The blower driven knife did not have laminar flow and was constantly needing adjustment.  To top all things the blower would pick up particulate from the ambient environment and send it onto the part also.

The customer replaced the blower system and the blower driven knife all with a single Super Air Knife.  The Super Air Knife never needs adjustment and has a laminar flow which permits even pushing of the wrap onto the chilled roller.  The other part of this application that helped the customer is the fact that they no longer have particulate that was getting sucked up by the blower and being blown onto the product and causing defects.  The Super Air Knife is also a smaller footprint than the blower driven knife was so they are able to get closer to their application and have an even more precise air flow going onto the product.

If you have an application where space and laminar flow are the issue feel free to give us a call.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF