Tag: brass

What’s So Great About EXAIR Air Jets?

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

For over 40 years now, EXAIR has been making engineered Air Nozzles and Air Jets for a wide range of industrial and commercial applications. Basically, if you need to blow air onto, into, towards, or through something, we’ve got something for that.

Our Super Air Nozzles seem to “get all the press” (based on an unscientific survey of the EXAIR Blog), and maybe they should, with their ease of installation onto the end of a pipe or tube that someone who’s never thought about the cost of compressed air has been using as a cheap to make but expensive to operate blowoff.

Compression fittings and Model 1100 Super Air Nozzles transformed the part ejection from “loud and wasteful” to “quiet and efficient.”

Like our engineered Super Air Nozzles, our Air Jet products use the Coanda effect to entrain enormous amounts of free air from the surrounding environment. While the Super Air Nozzles do this via an array of small holes recessed between a series of fins, the Air Jet uses an internal annular ring nozzle to draw the free air through its throat. There are a number of applications where either a Super Air Nozzle or an Air Jet can be used efficiently, safely, and quietly. Some jobs, however, benefit from the specific design of one or the other. Since this is an Air Jets blog, I’m going to focus on them:

  • Powerful, directed air stream. This makes EXAIR Air Jets ideal for part ejection, chip removal, and part drying.
Model 6013 Brass High Velocity Air Jet (left) blows rinse water off beverage cans on a high speed conveyor. An array of Model 6013SS SS High Velocity Air Jets (right) dries a finned component after washing.
  • Reliable and efficient blowoff. With no moving parts, as long as you supply them with clean compressed air, they’ll operate darn near indefinitely, maintenance free. And they’ll use a LOT less of that compressed air than similarly sized open-ended blowoff devices too, thanks to engineering:
Compressed air enters through the 1/8 MNPT fitting and discharges into the throat via an annular ring gap, where the Coanda profile of the plug directs the air towards the jet outlet (1). This primary, high velocity flow pulls in air from the entrainment plenum (2), creating a total developed flow up to 25 times the compressed air flow (3).
  • Safe to use. EXAIR Air Jets, like the rest of our Intelligent Compressed Air Products, are compliant with OSHA Standard 1910.242(b) which limits the downstream pressure at the nozzle or opening of a compressed air device used for cleaning purposes to 30psi. If you cover the entire outlet opening, the air simply flows out the entrainment plenum.
  • Remote positioning. Since both the inlet and outlet can be ducted, you can fit a 1″ ID hose over the entrainment plenum and run the other end to the location where you want to draw airflow from. This is beneficial if, for example, you want to position the Air Jet in a contaminated area, but want to eliminate any of that contamination from the Air Jet’s developed airflow. You can also fit a 1/2″ ID hose over the outlet to direct the airflow elsewhere.
  • Adjustability. For the Adjustable Air Jet, it’s right there in the name: the Plug can be threaded into, or out of, the body to reduce, or increase the annular ring nozzle’s gap, and hence, the airflow and force applied. There’s a micrometer gap indicator so you can set – and reset – the performance to different levels, as required. The High Velocity Air Jet’s annular ring nozzle gap is fixed with a shim (they come with a 0.015″ thick shim installed) but Shim Sets, containing one each of a 0.006″ and 0.009″ thick shim, can be used to make gross adjustments to the airflow and force applied. You can regulate the air supply pressure to either the Adjustable or High Velocity Air Jets to very precisely “dial in” the performance.
A 0.006″ or 0.009″ thick shim from the 6313 Air Jet Shim Set (top left) can be installed in a High Velocity Air Jet (bottom left) to put the Air Jet in a whole new performance band. You can do this to an Adjustable Air Jet (right) by turning the knurled ring on the plug to set (and reset) the air gap and hence the performance.
  • Materials of construction. Both the Adjustable and High Velocity Air Jets come in brass for general purpose applications, or 303SS for use in areas with high heat or corrosive elements in the environment.
The brass Air Jets (top) are rated for installation in areas with ambient temperatures up to 275°F, while the 303SS models (bottom) are good to 400°F.

If you’d like to find out more about EXAIR Air Jets, or how any of our Intelligent Compressed Air Products can help you get the most out of your compressed air system, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
Visit us on the Web
Follow me on Twitter
Like us on Facebook

Chip Vac Cleans Brass Chips and Shavings – IHP Promo Still Ongoing!

Published on by Tyler DanielLeave a comment

All good things must come to an end. But, that’s NOT going to be the case for the EXAIR IHP Promo. We’ve extended our Industrial Housekeeping Promotion now through the month of May. Order any of EXAIR’s Industrial Housekeeping Systems and receive a FREE Vac-U-Gun.

Taking advantage of this just recently was a customer in South America looking for a solution for vacuuming brass chips and shavings from their machine. They’d been using standard electrical shop vacs, which served their intended purpose. Albeit for a limited time only. The issue with electric shop vac style vacuums in industrial environments is that they’re simply not designed for the type of use and abuse common in a manufacturing facility. They were sick of replacing those periodically throughout the year and began seeking a more permanent solution.

Electrically powered vacuums or shop vacs are not designed to be operated in a rugged industrial environment. Filters clog, motors wear out, and you find yourself frequently replacing them. EXAIR’s Chip Vac has NO moving parts to wear out, doesn’t require maintenance, and needs nothing but a source of compressed air to operate. In addition, the sound level produced is half of that produced by an electric vacuum.

EXAIR’s Chip Vac Family

EXAIR’s Chip Vac is a compressed air operated industrial duty vacuum designed specifically for vacuuming up chips and shavings. The powerful vacuum is suitable for use with metal, wood, or plastic chips and is designed to thread into the 2” NPT bung on standard drum lids. The Chip Vac can handle dry or wet chips from fixtures, floors and work surfaces of machining centers, lathes, saws, mills, and a variety of other industrial equipment.

The Chip Vac is sold in systems both with and without the drum. EXAIR has 5, 30, 55, and 110 gallon systems available for a wide range of applications. If you already have spare drums in your facility, the Chip Vac is also available with just the lid assembly, Chip Vac, 10’ hose, tools, and filter bag to attach to the top of your own drums.

All systems will include a drum lid with a locking ring that easily fits onto the top of a standard open-top drum. It’s easy to remove and place onto another drum so that different materials can be easily kept separate for recycling. Recycling companies will pay a premium price for pre-sorted chips and shavings. With the Chip Vac, it’s as easy as removing the lid and placing it onto a new drum in between jobs. Don’t waste your time this spring fooling with and replacing electrical vacuum systems. Get yourself a vacuum designed for the job. One that’ll be sure to last year after year! With these systems in stock, ready to ship with an order by 2:00 ET and an unconditional 30-day guarantee, there’s no reason to not give one a try!

Tyler Daniel

Application Engineer

E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com

X: @EXAIR_TD

Fasteners: SAE, Metric, Titanium, Stainless. Yes, We Can Accommodate.

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

In a previous life I worked in the metal cutting industry on machines that were all imported to the USA. Every machine we brought in had to have the air inlets changed out to match the NPT ports that most of our domestic customers had within their facilities. This simply made sense, why force someone to change an air fitting or something as simple as that to match the rest of their facility. The option we did not offer was to change all the hardware on the machine to match the rest of the SAE sized hardware and limit the number of tools their staff needed. That didn’t make sense. Well, here at EXAIR we like to do things differently.

There are several companies that I deal with here who always prefer their air inlets be different, whether it be a metric BSP thread or a larger NPT thread, maybe a global thread, or even a special fitting like a taper lock fitting. No matter the needs, as long as it will physically fit on the product, chances are we can offer the fitting that will simplify installation. Even past the installation we like to look forward to the complete ownership of our products. Once a machine is located in a facility, what other types of fasteners are used, what is the rest of the machine tooled with. When working on a machine as a maintenance person or adjusting the operation, not having to struggle with determining which Allen wrench or hex size a bolt is and risk damaging the bolt can be extremely helpful.

Most EXAIR products come from stock with standard fractional hardware. We do offer a number of products with a BSPT air inlet and they are often available with the same expediency as our other stock products, same day on orders received by 2 PM ET that are shipping within the U.S. As mentioned above, we can customize a product with the fasteners of your choice, as long as they pass our design criteria. Some of the most common fastener changes I have seen are converting a Super Air Knife to an M6-1.0 threaded bolt rather than the stock 1/4-20 fastener. There are a multitude of other requests that I recall throughout the years. Some of the most intricate are listed and explained below.


Specialty Hardware

From left to right: M6-1.0 stainless steel bolt, a titanium hex-head bolt, a Hastelloy hex-head bolt, brass hex-head bolt, Kolsterized hex-head bolt, special acorn head fastener, Allen key flat-head bolt. Each of these fasteners has been used within a custom configuration to meet a specific need, whether it be simply to match the metric or SAE hardware in the rest of the machine or to meet the demands of the environment they are going into. The bottom row are, integral star washer nut, serrated safety washer, and spring washer. Each of these has, again, been requested by a customer to meet the design and safety standards they have a requirement for. These are just a sampling of the custom hardware we have used over the years to support our customer base and fill their need with product that meets their standards.

If you would like to discuss custom hardware in a stock product or even a full on custom point of use compressed air product, the Application Engineer team here is ready to help. Contact us and we will do our best to understand what your need requires and offer a solution to fit.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF