Tag: case study

EXAIR Case Study: Tube Cooling with the Adjustable Spot Cooler!

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

EXAIR has an extensive library of Case Studies for your reference to learn about how our products can help. The library is organized by product, so you can easily find the information and product you are interested in. These case studies summarize how our customers have purchased, used, and benefited from our products and their implementation. These studies focus on our products and our customers’ projects. We keep our customers anonymous and only use photos, details and data that are approved to be shared.
Here is an example of my latest case study!

APPLICATION GOAL: Customer is an OEM who builds 20 automated systems every year. One of the most time-consuming applications is heating and bending Teflon tubes that route fluids around the system. They wanted to speed up the time it took to do this, and increase the accuracy of the bends.

BEFORE EXAIR: When forming Teflon tubing for plumbing runs inside these large processing machines, the tubing needs to be heated with a heat gun to soften the tube to allow for forming. After forming, the tube must cool down to hold its shape. Cooling time can take approximately 6 minutes per bend. Alternatively, ice-water-soaked rags can be used, which may decrease the time down to 2–3 minutes.  However, there is no guarantee that the form will hold at the precise angle and may need to be reformed, which starts the process over again. Also, ice water and rags create a mess and can cause a slipping hazard if dripped on the floor.

AFTER EXAIR: Using the EXAIR Model 3925 Adjustable Dual Spot Cooler System, they were able to decrease the cooling time to under one minute. And due to the dual hose option, it gave them the ability to spread the cold air around the tubes so they did not have to remove them from the fixture while cooling, meaning the tube holds its shape to a greater accuracy.

SUMMARY:  By reducing the cooling time from 6 minutes per bend to approx. 1 minute per, with at least 300 bends per part, we can reduce the production time for each piece of equipment by 25 hours. Producing 20 pieces of equipment per year frees up the equivalent of 20.83 working days.  With an hourly rate average of $26.40, the EXAIR Model 3925 Adjustable Dual Spot Cooler System saves them $660.00 USD per machine in work hours alone! Over the course of one year, that’s a savings of $13,200.00 USD for just work hours. Meaning the ROI is right around the use of the Adjustable Spot Cooler to build one machine.

EXAIR appreciates a good success story. We encourage you to share your successes in using one or more of our products in your application. EXAIR believes in case studies so much, we incentivize our customers’ participation. We will offer a discount to any company who will provide enough information to produce a case study. If you are interested in creating a case study (and saving money) on your next project, please contact one of our Application Engineers. We would be happy to explain the details of working through this process with you.


Jordan Shouse, Application Engineer
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EXAIR Case Study: Chicken Wings, Super Air Knives, and Saving Money

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

EXAIR keeps a library of Case Studies for your reference. The library is also organized by product, so you can easily find the information and product you are interested in. These case studies summarize how our customers have purchased, used, and benefited from our products and their implementation. These studies focus on our products and our customers’ projects. We keep our customers anonymous and only use photos, details and data that are approved to be shared.

Here is an example of my latest case study!

APPLICATION GOAL:  A frozen chicken wing manufacturer was having issues with a drilled and slotted tube blowoff not evenly removing excess sauce from the wings and belt prior to it going into a spiral freezer.  They also had concerns about the volume of air the pipe was consuming and how loud it was, so they wanted to reduce both of these features.

Drilled and Slotted tube in location
Drilled and slotted tube

BEFORE EXAIR:  A new sauce applicator had been installed at the customer’s plant. A drilled and slotted tube was provided with the equipment. This tube ran approximately 14 hours per day at a pressure of 16 PSIG to remove excess sauce on chicken wings. Due to the lack of performance, they temporally installed another drilled and slotted tube to remove excess sauce. The header pressure on these knives was 60 PSIG, but due to the large volume of air they were consuming, they were only able to run them at 16 PSIG. And at 16 PSIG they produced a sound level well over 90 dBA.

AFTER EXAIR:  The customer installed a 110030SS-316PKI 30’’ 316 Stainless Steel Super Air Knife on the sauce applicator and a 110024SS-316PKI 24’’ 316 Stainless Steel Super Air Knife on the Spiral Freezer. (Both with plumbing kits installed) They reduced the noise to 65 dBA. The old drilled and slotted tubes consumed 484.2 SCFM each at the 16 PSIG. For a total consumption of 968.4 SCFM with both tubes. The Super air knives combined consume 124.2 SCFM at 60 PSIG. And the Super Air Knives laminar flow provided better sauce removal, over the turbulent nature of the drilled and slotted tube.

30″ 316 Super Air Knife with plumbing kit installed

SUMMARY:  The sauce removal process performance increased dramatically, reducing the rejected product. Sound levels dropped from over 90 dBA to 65 dBA, a reduction of 25 dBA. Air consumption went from 968.4 SCFM to 124.2 SCFM. When you factor in the 14 hours these knives are running, that is 709,128 SCF of air per day saved. Based on a compressed air cost of $0.25 per 1000 SCF of air, that calculates out to over $177.28 in compressed air cost saved every day. ($46,092.80 saved per year, 260 working days) The ROI on these two knives is just under 30 days.

EXAIR appreciates a good success story. We encourage you to share your successes in using one or more of our products in your application. EXAIR believes in case studies so much, we incentivize our customers’ participation. We will offer a discount to any company who will provide enough information to produce a case study. If you are interested in creating a case study (and saving money) on your next project, please contact one of our Application Engineers. We would be happy to explain the details of working through this process with you.

Jordan Shouse, Application Engineer

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Find us on the Web 
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Twitter: @EXAIR_JS

EXAIR Case Studies Share Succe$$

Published on by EricKuhnash@EXAIR.comLeave a comment

EXAIR provides many informative tools to help you decide which of our products will work best for you. We have a qualified staff of Application Engineers, a comprehensive catalog, Installation Sheets, Blogs, and a library of Case Studies, to name a few. Following is more about our Case Studies and how they can be helpful.

EXAIR keeps a library of Case Studies for your reference. The Library s is also organized by product so you can easily find the information and product you have interest. These case studies summarize how our customers have purchased, used, and benefited from our products and their purchase. These studies focus on our products and your project, we do not use our customer names and only use photos and verbiage that you approve and share with us.

The process to develop a Case Study is as easy as talking to one of our Application Engineers. We will discuss your project and work with you to decide the wording and photos that you approve for the study. Once the study has been completed and approved we can discuss a credit on your purchase or percentage discount on your next purchase. This becomes a “win, win” for both you and EXAIR.

EXAIR appreciates a good success story, and we want to encourage you to share your success from using one or more of our products. This is why EXAIR incentivizes Case Studies. We will offer a discount to any company who will provide enough information to produce a case study. If you have interest to create a Case Study (and save money) on your next project please contact one of our Application Engineers so we can discuss your application and goals.

Eric Kuhnash
Application Engineer
E-mail: EricKuhnash@exair.com
Twitter: Twitter: @EXAIR_EK

EXAIR Case Study Library: Help Me Help You

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

EXAIR Corporation has a broad range of resources to aid in the selection of the right product for the right application:

If you’re a regular reader of EXAIR blogs, you’ve seen a number of “brags” on the successful implementation of just about all of our products. Another “more” part of our website is Applications, where you’ll find WAY more brief summaries of EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Product successes than we can fit in our catalog. These come from conversations, emails, and oftentimes shared photos or videos between EXAIR Application Engineers and our customers. We get to write those up as examples of our products making things better. On the occasions where the customer is willing to work with us to quantify how MUCH better our products have made things, we’re able to do a Case Study. A typical Case Study involves collection of “before/after” data, quantifying the benefits of using EXAIR products. This can include, but is not necessarily limited to :

  • Compressed air consumption
  • Noise level
  • Safety (OSHA compliance)
  • Performance improvements
  • Product durability/longevity

At last count, there are over forty entries in our Case Study Library. You can search these by Product, or by Application…depending on what, specifically, you’d like to know. Registration (free and easy) is required to access our Case Studies…if you’re already registered & signed in, you can read the details on any of them. For your immediate viewing, though, here are the pertinent details on just a few:

“Before/After” photos of this efficient and quiet upgrade.
  • More durable and efficient Safety Air Guns: This customer’s main concern was the durability of the air gun they were using. This was a situation where they sent one in for Efficiency Lab testing (that’s one of the ways we can help collect “before” data for a Case Study). I did this one, and the customer’s air gun’s trigger BROKE WHILE I WAS TESTING IT. In addition to providing a more durable product (a Model 1310 Heavy Duty Safety Air Gun, specifically), it also reduced the compressed air consumption from 63.5 SCFM to 14 SCFM, and the sound level dropped from 89.9dBA to just 74dBA.
EXAIR Safety Air Guns: rugged construction, quiet & efficient performance.
Static charge from simple contact between this injection molded plastic part & the mold caused defects in a subsequent metallic coating process (left,) which were eliminated after an EXAIR Super Ion Air Knife was installed (right.)

So, back to the title of this blog…how can you “help me help you” with a Case Study? Let’s start with that 2nd part. Upon successful completion of a Case Study, I can “help you” with a credit on the order you placed for the EXAIR product(s) that replaced what you were using before, or a discount on a subsequent order…if, for example you got a Super Ion Air Knife to try out on one of your headlight making machines, and it worked so good you want to put them on the other nine machines (true story).

The “help me” part is pretty easy too. If you have instrumentation (air flow meters, sound level meters, etc.) to gather the “before” data, we can use that for the Case Study. If you don’t, we do. You can send the subject devices in for Efficiency Lab testing…our engineering staff will use calibrated test equipment to work up a detailed performance profile on what you send in. It’s a free service we offer to anyone who wants this data, in fact, and Efficiency Lab testing has no effect on the credits or discounts we offer for participation in a Case Study.

I also “help you” (and “help me”) by keeping your name, and your company’s name, off the Case Study. That way, if your process or product is proprietary in nature, we don’t risk sharing your hard earned success with your competition. We also don’t run afoul of the authorities, like this one last Case Study I’m going to share, where a machine shop was blowing off parts they make for the military that are classified in nature. They had crimped copper tubing pointed at the cutting tool, and it worked…it was just loud and wasteful. They zipped the crimped ends off and installed Model 1100 Super Air Nozzles with a simple compression fitting. Had the photo below shown the machined part in the lathe chuck, “we’re ALL going to prison” according to the customer:

One well-cropped photo made for a great Case Study, and nobody had to go to prison. THAT was a good deal.

This one, by the way, saved 2.7 SCFM per nozzle (over $840.00 a year in compressed air savings), and reduced the sound level from 96dBA to only 76dBA.

EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Products have been making things better for compressed air users for almost forty years. If you’d like to find out how MUCH better we can make things for you, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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