Tag: Blowoff

Find Products for Your Process with EXAIR’s Interactive Factory Floor

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

            EXAIR and BETE have launched a new interactive factory microsite designed to help manufacturers quickly identify products that can improve efficiency, safety, and performance throughout their facility. The digital experience features a fully interactive factory floor map with clickable hotspots positioned throughout key production and maintenance areas. Each hotspot highlights how specific EXAIR & BETE products can be applied to real-world industrial processes, giving users a practical, visual way to explore engineered solutions for their operations. 

            The new digital plant allows users to navigate through different areas of a manufacturing facility and interact with application-specific product recommendations. Each hotspot provides product images, concise explanations of how the product functions in that environment, and direct access to product pages for fast, convenient purchasing. From conveying and cooling to blow-off, static elimination, and industrial cleanup, the platform demonstrates how liquid and air solutions integrate into everyday manufacturing challenges. Built to simplify product discovery and improve customer experience, the microsite offers an engaging new way for engineers, maintenance personnel and plant managers to evaluate solutions tailored to their needs. 

            This tool is part of EXAIR and BETE’s ongoing commitment to providing customers with accessible tools and technical resources for solving industrial challenges. In addition to the new digital experience, EXAIR offers a wide range of support resources, including detailed product line cards, application guides, drawings, blog articles, Efficiency Lab, videos, technical documentation, and direct access to Application Engineers for personalized assistance to help customers confidently select the right solution for their application.  You can find it here: Factory Floor.

                Currently, we have Food and Beverage Production with more to come.  Please take a tour and if you wish to share any past developments or wish to improve production rates, an Application Engineer will be able to assist you. 

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

Dude, Where’s My Safety Air Gun?

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

I am the poster child for misplaced items. A couple of years back, I lost the key to my truck. I looked for it for WEEKS (it’s not my daily driver) — and finally admitted defeat. A local locksmith offered mobile service, which was kind of expensive but not as bad as I thought, and made me a new key in about a half hour. He actually made two (my wife insisted) and having my truck back just in time for that spring’s mulch was well worth it. Knowing the location of the spare key is nice & comforting too.

Just last fall, I lost my glasses one fine Friday afternoon. I’m only moderately nearsighted, so it was just a mild-to-moderate inconvenience. After a quick trip to the eye doctor and a local business that makes glasses on the same day, I had two new pairs of glasses (my wife, again, insisted on the 2nd pair.) When I got home, my “lost” glasses were on the counter…she’d found them between the arm of the couch and the end table. Ironically, if I’d had a pair of glasses, I’d have found them easily since that’s one of the first places I looked, but was unable to see them with my compromised vision.

Last month, both of those incidents came to mind when the Press Release dropped for a new EXAIR product: our Model 5920 Air Cradle.

EXAIR’s new Air Cradle is a simple but innovative accessory designed to keep safety air guns and similarly sized tools within easy reach at workstations and machine centers.

It’ll hold up to 10lbs, so you can even leave the air supply hose hooked up. Using the Air Cradle means you won’t have to search for your Safety Air Gun, worry about it getting damaged or dropped, and you’ll be one step closer to having a well-organized work space.

Now, I’m not saying that if I had a “truck key cradle” or an “eyeglasses cradle” I wouldn’t have lost my keys or glasses…it’s important to note that one has to actually USE handy organizational tools to be organized…but it would’ve definitely lowered the chances of losing them.

I think it’s also important to note that the Air Cradle came about as a direct result of a customer or two asking about properly stowing their Safety Air Gun. We have regularly scheduled meetings where we discuss calls like that, and the Air Cradle was the direct result of such a conversation. If you have questions about compressed air in general, or EXAIR engineered compressed air products specifically, we’d love to hear from you…whether your call leads to a new product’s development or not!

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Six Steps To Optimizing Your Compressed Air System — Step 5: Intermediate Storage

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

If you use compressed air for ANYTHING, odds are EVERYTHING you use it for has a minimum supply pressure for proper operation. And if the supply pressure drops below that:

  • Blowoff devices won’t develop enough flow & force to effectively clean or dry the object(s) you use them for.
  • Air-operated chucks on CNC machines won’t hold the piece steady enough for proper cutting, and tool changers will operate slowly/sluggishly. This is a bad combination…increasing the time it takes to make something, AND making it poorly.
  • Pneumatic cylinders will actuate slowly…if at all. This can cause a big problem if, for instance, they’re used to lift a lid on a mixing tank for an automated chemical add, which ends up pouring all over the partially closed lid of the tank instead of going inside it.

These are just a few of the problems that inadequate supply pressure can lead to, and I list them specifically because I experienced them all during my storied (and strange) career path before EXAIR made me the compressed air know-it-all expert I am today. It wasn’t my job to fix those problems (I was on site doing field service on a scale, a hydraulic motor, and a chemical pump, respectively), so I had no idea HOW to fix the compressed air-related problems…but I do now.

One quick & easy fix would have been to increase the compressor discharge pressure. That’d work just fine, but it comes with a cost. Every 2psi increase in discharge pressure increases the power consumption of the compressor’s motor by 1%. Let’s say you increased the discharge pressure from 100psig to 120psig – that’s a 10% increase in power consumption…and operating cost. To add insult to injury, that also increases the magnitude of any leaks in your system, making them more costly as well.

EXAIR Model 9500-60 60 Gallon Receiver Tank.

Actually, that probably IS what I’d have done as a scale, hydraulics, or industrial pump technician. The RIGHT answer, though, is intermediate storage. A properly sized Receiver Tank, located close enough to those operations, would have prevented those problems without increasing operating costs. In fact, it could have even brought them down, if the compressed air header pressure was already set to overcome any pressure drops on the way to those air guns, CNC machine, or mixing tank lid cylinders. Every 2% DECREASE in discharge pressure will also decrease the compressor motor’s power consumption by 1%. Which is actually Step 6 in our Six Steps To Optimizing Your Compressed Air System.

You electrical-types out there could also think of it as a capacitor – absorbing demand spikes & helping the circuit run more evenly.

Sizing a Receiver Tank is fairly straightforward, and we’ve written about it here, here, and here. You can, of course, always contact an Application Engineer to do (or check) the math…give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Super Air Knife Solves Condensation Labeling Issue for Pharmaceutical Manufacturer

Published on by Tyler DanielLeave a comment

In the pharmaceutical industry, it’s rather critical to ensure products are appropriately marked and labeled. This allows for proper tracing of the product throughout the manufacturing process and ensures the end customer has the necessary information they need on the container the products are packaged in.

For some processes in this industry, labeling applications present a few problems. While in many cases the problems are attributed to static electricity, I recently worked on an application for removing condensation prior to a labeling process. While this is a common application we help serve in the Food & Beverage Industry, this one was a first for me with regards to pharmaceuticals.

The manufacturer of a variety of different pharmaceutical products used for animals was having an issue with a few of their products they produce. They had a line that processes a variety of different styles of products, but with one particular type they were having this issue with the label application.

Some of their products must be held at relatively low temperatures. Throughout the filling process they are held within a refrigerated zone. The area in the facility where the labels are applied is also climate-controlled, but not completely refrigerated. The bottles are only in this location for the brief labeling process before being placed back into coolers, but it was not possible for them to relocate the labeling process elsewhere.

The issue they were having was occurring during the warmer, humid days of summer. As the bottles were placed into the labeling machine, condensation would form that prohibits the label from correctly adhering. This led to a lot of rework and manual label application, while also contributing to some waste as products were held outside of refrigeration for too long.

They began seeking out a solution for blowing off the residual condensation prior to labeling and contacted EXAIR for a solution. To combat this problem, we implemented a two-tiered blowoff solution. There was a rotating table where the product is initially held, (2) Model 110024SS-316 Stainless Steel Super Air Knives were used to provide an initial blowoff inside the contained area. This took care of some of that initial condensation, but left some bottles with still a bit of residual moisture that was still creating issues.

We added a Model 120020 ¾” Super Air Amplifier to blow on each individual bottle immediately prior to labeling to take care of any condensation that formed after the initial blowoff. With both of these solutions in place, the condensation is immediately stripped off the outside of the vials and allows for a clean label application each and every time.

EXAIR offers a wide range of products that can be used for blowoff. Options are available in 316 Stainless Steel from stock for a variety of applications in both the Food and Pharmaceutical Industries.

For help selecting the best products for your process, get in contact with one of EXAIR’s Application Engineers today.

Tyler Daniel, CCASS

Application Engineer

E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com

X: @EXAIR_TD