Tag: cad

What’s So Great About EXAIR’s CAD Library?

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

I was first introduced to CAD drawings when I was in the Navy. Right out of Nuclear Power School, I reported to a new construction Trident submarine. My first job was taking paper P&ID’s (Piping & Instrumentation Diagrams) to the Engineering room to verify that the valves, flanges, welds, pressure gauges, thermometers, etc. of various reactor and steam plant piping systems were in the right place, correctly labeled or marked, and visually free of defects. They’ve come a LONG way, technologically, since then:

When I left the Navy, I included some vague verbiage about CAD expertise on my resume. That actually got me a pretty cool job with an industrial pump company...making to-scale drawings of pump and drive assemblies, usually mounted on steel baseplates, that showed distances from the pump’s fluid ports to the baseplate mounting holes, so the millwrights & pipe fitters could work together to prepare for installation.

The absolute number one most important resource I had at my disposal was the ability to get to-scale CAD files (.dxf or .dwg) from pump, motor, gearbox, coupling, etc., manufacturers. The first rule of CAD is “never draw anything twice” and I rarely had to draw anything, except for items that we were fabricating ourselves. I had to call some manufacturers; others I could email; some would mail out a 3.5″ floppy disk (I know I’m dating myself with that one) or a CD (before THEY went obsolete) with everything they made on it…and some had drawing files you could download straight from their website. Just like EXAIR does.

Almost all the drawings I made back in the late 20th Century were 2D (front and side views), but nowadays, almost everyone uses solid modeling software (or apps) for drawings. This has the distinct advantage of being able to see the assembly from any angle, so you can tell right away if there’s going to be physical interference between two parts in close proximity to each other. While you can download models in a number of formats from the EXAIR website, .stp files are common to most modeling apps, so they’re the ones that get downloaded most.

If you have questions about EXAIR products — how they work, what they’re made of, which one is best for your application – give me a call. And if you need a drawing, I can help with that too.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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EXAIR Product Drawings

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

My friend Bill’s Dad was an engineer for a major aviation manufacturer, and was among the first to use their brand-new (in the late 1960’s) computer-aided design & drafting (CADD) program. Their metal fab shop was still making drawings by hand, and asked him how precise the tolerances could be on a CADD drawing. He told them it could be as tight as a ten thousandth of a inch (0.0001″) so they asked him for such a drawing – aviation components have famously tight tolerances – so he entered it all in to the mainframe computer, which took a considerable amount of time and resources, but it generated the drawing that the fab shop needed. Later, they came and told him they were ready to make the part and asked if he wanted to come see it. When he got to the shop, he saw his drawing next to a piece of sheet metal on a table. The cut lines (specified by his drawing, which, again, had tolerances to the ten thousandth of an inch) were laid out in grease pencil, and a technician was readying an oxy-acetylene torch to make the cuts. That was the last time he took the trouble to make a drawing for that particular shop.

I don’t know for sure, but I’m fairly certain these parts aren’t made with a grease pencil & blowtorch.

In the 1990’s, I worked for an industrial pump company, and a big part of my job was using CAD (some time in the 1970’s or 1980’s, the 2nd “D” fell out of use, and it became known as computer-aided design, or computer-aided drafting) to make drawings showing our customers where the pump’s fluid ports would be (so they could prepare the suction & discharge piping) as well as the fabrication drawings for the baseplates that we mounted the pump and drive equipment on. The computer I used for that sat on my desk, whereas the computer that Bill’s Dad used occupied several rooms in the building. I also used a mouse & keyboard instead of punch cards and magnetic tape reels to input my shapes & dimensions. And I don’t even want to think about how much more power their computer used.

I learned quickly that the first law of CAD is “never draw anything twice”, so I was ALWAYS pleased when manufacturers had CAD files to send me. I could simply drop those in to my drawings, and go about my day. That’s why, when I started this job at EXAIR, one of the things that impressed me most was our comprehensive CAD Library in our Knowledge Base. We do require registration (fast & free) as a user, but once you’re in the system, you can instantly download CAD files for any of our products. We even have solid models for folks who work magic with 3D design (I was strictly a 2D guy.)

EXAIR’s CAD Library has 2D drawings and 3D models of all of our products, like a Super Air Knife (left), Line Vac (center), or even a Chip Trapper System (right).

For any stock EXAIR product, you’re only a few mouse clicks away from getting drawing files. Our R&D engineers can also generate drawings of custom products – special length Air Knives, Line Vacs with custom flanges, etc. – upon request. If you’d like to find out more, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Models – Childhood vs. Modern World

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

When I use the term models, I am often taken back to the plastic models I would build as a kid. The models I always focused on were classic muscle cars and some World-War 2-era aircraft. There was always something about my dad helping me with them and really deep in my mind I felt like I was building a real car. Well, like most things, the term models have changed. While there are still plastic models found, the hobby shops have dwindled in numbers and a lot of models now refer to computer-aided drawing, or CAD for short, another acronym just like I talked about last week.

Organized Chaos. As an adult, I get a slight bit of anxiety about this picture. At the same time, it brings back that feeling of looking for just the right model and having one catch my eye that I wasn’t expecting.

CAD models have really simplified the design and implementation process for anything, even buying furniture for your home. You can use free CAD software to lay out your room and render the environment. In industrial environments, a CAD model can really give the full picture of how the products will fit, what kind of mounting will be needed, and help to design the plumbing or wiring that will be needed to get to the new component. Some models even let you test the functionality or see the coverage of spray / air patterns. This gives yet another method of validation before money is spent on procuring a product for physical testing.

The best part of this is that EXAIR has an entire CAD catalog that spans across all EXAIR products and these models can be downloaded in dozens of different formats to align well with the software being used in order to meet you, our customers where they are, rather than having to conform to what we use. These EXAIR CAD downloads are accurate and extremely helpful to use as a talking point and the Application Engineers here can help you improve the implementation of our products before you even get them, so it minimizes the amount of time it takes you to install the product once it is on site. We can also talk with you how to correctly position the products and validate the placement of our products in order to best serve the application at hand.

This may not be the finished model but I am pretty sure this was the exact kit I started with over 30 years ago.

These CAD models won’t permit you to 3D print a functional product. They will, however, let you 3D print a placeholder for the product that could be physically manipulated if you need to physically validate it before purchasing. While these models aren’t quite the same as that 1968 Chey Comaro SS that I built with my dad way back when it is probably still in a box in the closet at my parents’ house, they are helpful and can give you an assurance of how the EXAIR item is going to fit. After all, assurance and validation is what a lot of building those models really was about now that I think about it.

If you need help with CAD models of EXAIR products, for some odd reason you can’t find the exact model you are looking for, that’s what our Application Engineering team is here to help with. So contact us.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF