Tag: business

Seeing is Believing

Published on by Dave WoernerLeave a comment

My wife and I are searching for our first home this week, which has been an eye-opening experience in many ways.  There are so many things that you have to learn about financing, home inspection, layouts, locations and insurance.  There is insurance or warranties for the home, title, and asbestos, but that is for another day.

The thing that my wife and I both noticed is that we wouldn’t look at any houses that didn’t have pictures available.  We just assumed that if they didn’t have pictures available the place wasn’t worth our time.  The one house without pictures that we did visit was disaster.  The one photo of the outside of the house was very old, but there were no pictures of the inside of the house. When we got a closer look at the outside of the house, the paint was peeling, the yard was a mess, and the screen door was locked.  We couldn’t get inside to see the rest of the house.  This leads me to be very hesitant to consider any purchase without seeing at least a photo of the unit.  If you are trying to sell a product and you don’t have photos readily available it seems safe to assume that since it wasn’t important enough to the sellers to put the photos online, it wasn’t worth my time looking at the place or product to find out what they were trying to hide.  I’m very weary of any sale of product were I can’t see what I’m buying.

open_door_to_question_mark

At EXAIR.com, we provide all of the specs for our products to anyone who would like the information on our products.  In our Application Database, we feature many of the applications that we have in our thirty years of experience of making compressed air products.  The CAD Library has detailed dimensional drawings for all of our products.  Finally in the Video Library all of our products are explained and shown in action.  We strive to provide you the most information about our products  available.  Furthermore, we allow you to take advantage of a 30 day trial on all cataloged products – not only can you see it first, you can use it in your application!Capture

Dave Woerner
Application Engineer
davewoerner@exair.com
@EXAIR_DW

Back to Business

Published on by Lee EvansLeave a comment

leadership

The past few weeks have found me on vacation, taking some well earned time to relax with family.  While feeling very European for the extended holiday, I also had some time to reflect and let my thoughts wander.  One such thought was the mindset and culture of business, and how a business conducts itself internally.

This particular thought came to mind when wrestling with a service provider over an account I cancelled almost six months ago.  To my surprise I keep receiving a bill every month and it seems never-ending that I have to call in again and explain that I switched to a competitor.

What stands out in these interactions is that no matter the person to whom I am speaking, their response is generally the same: “My boss wont allow these changes..”, which then requires me to speak to a supervisor and jump on a merry-go-round of a phone call that is almost immediately regrettable.  But it makes me think, “Who are these bosses?”

Maybe I’m blinded by my desire for vindication in this particular scenario, but its my firm belief that those in a higher position are supposed to lead by example.  There’s a very clear distinction between a boss and a leader, and I think the graphic above says it all.

We give great care to make sure EXAIR stays in the category of leadership, whether in the marketplace with our products, or internally through our personnel.  Yesterday I worked with an end user helping them select the proper Chip Vac for their application.  At the end of the call they guy told me “You guys are the best.  This is the second time I’ve worked with you and its been outstanding.”

You don’t get those unsolicited kudos by sitting on the business.  They come from leadership.

Let EXAIR show you the difference.

Lee Evans
Application Engineer
LeeEvans@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_LE

One Line Vac or Two?

Published on by Dave WoernerLeave a comment

Over the last couple weeks, I have received a couple Line Vac inquiries that have featured some tips and common questions about Line Vacs that I thought I would share with you, our regular readers.  Line Vacs are EXAIR’s air operated conveyors that connect to tubing to create a powerful conveying device that is powered only by compressed air.  The Line Vac range in size from 3/8″ to 5″ ID tube.  These air operated conveyors can move materials of every shape and make up.  Standard Line Vacs will convey plastics, foam, grain, metal chips, and anything that you might move with a motorized industrial vacuum.  Additionally, Heavy Duty Line Vacs can uses more compressed air to convey materials further or heavier materials than the Standard Line Vac.  Line Vacs work wonderfully to replace bucket and ladder operations or to convey material across a warehouse floor.  They do not replace Super Sack loaders or dumpers, where you need to move 1000’s of pounds of material in a matter of minutes.

LineVacApp

“Can we use two Line Vacs, if material needs to be move further than one Line Vac’s power?” is one of the things that we are always asked.  The short answer is yes, but you will not double the performance of the Line Vac.  Because the restrictions of the conveying hose size, the material being conveyed will move faster with two Line Vacs than it would with one Line Vac, but it will not be double the performance of single Line Vac.

The situation with the greatest reward for two Line Vacs is to convey material much further.  The second Line Vac can be installed more than halfway though the run to maintain the particle velocity through the entire length of the run or at a sweep where the particles will slow down because of the turn.  Also, the second Line Vac will face a restriction in the size of the line, which means it will improve the performance, but adding three and four Line Vacs back to back will net diminishing returns for the amount of compressed air used.  It is better to spread out multiple Line Vacs evenly along the run.

The second thing I want to talk about is that just like a water pump, Line Vac can only vacuum so much.  Absolute vacuum can only produce 14.7 PSI differential from atmospheric pressure, so a Line Vac will always be able to blow much farther and faster than it can vacuum.  This means that you only want to have about 1 or 5 feet of feed hose before a Line Vac and the majority of the distance you are trying to convey after the Line Vac.  We don’t mention this in the videos, but you will notice that we will always use a short amount of tubing on the inlet side of the Line Vac and a much longer run on the outlet side.  See this video of a short inlet hose to the Line Vac.  This ratio will make the most efficient use of the Line Vacs.

Dave Woerner

Application Engineer

The Heat is On!

Published on by Dave WoernerLeave a comment

Well, it is here.  The middle of summer cannot be denied in Cincinnati this week.  We have had a high temperature of at least ninety degrees the last five days with near 100% humidity.  These are the days when you have to either work very earlier in the morning or very late at night to get any yard work done.  You’ll notice that the most of our blogs the last couple weeks have been about keeping things cool, like Cabinet Cooler systems, or High Temperature Cabinet Coolers.  I’m not one to buck a trend, so I’m going to talk about cooling as well, but I will talk about cooling a manufactured product.

A customer this week was designing a new plastic extrusion system and he needs to quickly cool four plastic extrusions strands from 400 degrees Fahrenheit to 120 degrees at a fairly high feed rate.  In the past the customer had used an immersion bath followed by a blow off station using EXAIR’s Air Knives, Air Wipes, or Super Air Nozzles depending on the plastic extrusions geometry.  The immersion bath would use the specific heat of the water to quickly take away the heat from the extruded plastic.  This process had worked well for him in the past, but the immersion bath was expensive to build and maintain.  For these reasons, he was looking for an alternative.

What is going to cool better than water?  The water in the immersion bath has a very high specific heat, which is what makes it such a good material for cooling large amounts of heat very quickly.  Specific heat is the amount of energy it takes to raise 1 pound of mass 1 degree Fahrenheit.  One British Thermal Unit (BTU) is the amount of energy it takes to heat or cool one pound of water one degree.  A BTU is 1,055 Joules, which is a very high specific heat compared most other common materials.  So we can’t change the immersion liquid, but could we come up with a better process?

Well of course we can.  We can use both the specific heat of water and the latent heat of water.  The latent heat is the amount of energy water takes to evaporate.  The latent heat of water is 970.4 BTU per pound.  If we can use both the specific heat of water and the latent heat of water, we can increase our cooling and not need a large, expensive immersion bath.  The customer came up with the idea of using Atomizing Spray Nozzles and a blow off station to get the same amount of cooling but without needing a water bath.  By spraying a fine mist of water onto the extrusions, we create almost the same amount of conduction with the water and the plastic.  The water takes out the energy of rising from room temperature to its boiling point, then takes out the energy of evaporating, and then the air dries the remaining water and takes away any more heat that may be remaining.

Dave Woerner
Application Engineer
davewoerner@exair.com
@EXAIR_DW