If you’re building a vacuum lifting system, you have two basic choices for equipment to create the vacuum: a mechanically driven vacuum pump, or an air operated Venturi. Today, I’m going to tell the tale of some folks who switched from the former to the latter, and why they did it.
This customer makes cans for food, just like the ones you see on the shelf at the supermarket (in fact, it’s very likely you see the actual cans they make on those shelves) out of thin steel sheets. A vacuum lifting system, consisting of two rubber vacuum cups on the ends of two fast moving cylinders (90 times a minute fast) pick up the sheets and move them into a feeder, where the sheet is cut, rolled, and formed into can shapes. A mechanical vacuum pump provided the suction for the cups, and it worked great…until it didn’t. See, vacuum pumps like those have rotating parts in tight tolerance with other parts, and over time, they wear out. Since this facility runs 24/7, so do the vacuum pumps. They also run loud, and hot, until they break down. Which the one they called me about had done five times in the previous year, causing unplanned shutdowns of the machine, each lasting at least two hours, depending on how complicated the repair was, and if they had the right parts on hand. The first part of that time was spent waiting for the pump to cool down to a temperature that the maintenance techs could safely crawl under the machine (it wasn’t even in a convenient location) to remove it for the repairs. If there was a bright side, the awful racket the pump made stopped when the pump did. Not much of a bright side, though, as that silence was the sound of lost production. And revenue.
So, when the customer called, we talked about which Vacuum Generator would be the best fit, and how they could be incorporated into the system. Since the machine moved so fast (again, 90 times a minute fast,) they’d need to be as close as possible to the vacuum cups. That wouldn’t be a problem – our E-Vac Vacuum Generators are small, and light, so they could be fitted right onto the lifting cylinders. The thin steel sheets sometimes had wood chips or splinters on them from the pallets they came on. So we looked at Adjustable E-Vacs, which have larger throats to pass that particulate, since it could have clogged the narrow throat of an In-Line E-Vac.
Since we were using Adjustable E-Vacs, and size & weight were prime considerations, we decided on the Model 840008M Adjustable E-Vacs, which are the smallest & lightest. Being adjustable, they could be ‘dialed out’ for higher vacuum performance, if needed. Which, it turns out, they didn’t. In fact, they were able to reliably pick up the sheets with the compressed air pressure regulated down to 60psig, reducing the operating cost. Which was kind of a big deal, since they run 24/7.
After their success on the first machine, they outfitted their other three machines with the Adjustable E-Vacs. Now, they’re saving over $2,000.00 a year from the repairs they no longer have to do on the vacuum pumps, and don’t have to worry about lost production while they did those repairs. And if that wasn’t enough, the reduction in noise and elimination of the heat they threw off made the environment a LOT more comfortable for the operators.
If you’re building a vacuum lifting system, you’ve got choices. In this case, the best choice was EXAIR E-Vac Vacuum Generators. What’s the best choice for you? Let’s find out – give me a call.
Russ Bowman, CCASS
Application Engineer
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