Tag: Cincinnati

Traffic And Fluid Dynamics

Published on by Lee EvansLeave a comment

Traffic

Earlier this morning I heard that a high speed chase that started in Michigan ended near Cincinnati, Ohio. My first thought was that, due to traffic, the chase became a jam.  Depending on the time of day, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to go anywhere, no matter how much you want it to happen (a circumstance many of us experience).

Similarly, when there is inadequate sizing of a compressed air line, no amount of desire is going to deliver the air where it needs to be.  Imagine every air molecule in the pipe is a car on the road.  When demand spikes and all those air molecules need to go to the same place, they have to have sufficient space to do so, just like vehicles on the road need enough lanes to prevent backup.  When the demand for compressed air reaches the maximum flow rate of the pipe, this is called saturation.  When the demand for compressed air exceeds this saturation point, end use items such as air nozzles or air tools are going to be starved for air.  The air might get there, but it will be late, and the earlier air molecules will be long spent, leading to underperformance of the item.

Unfortunately for those of us who fight traffic daily, fluid flow mechanics don’t apply to traffic flow.  But, fortunately for those of us who use compressed air as a utility, compressed air IS bound by fluid mechanics.  So, if we can quantify the compressed air demand in a system, we can design the system with enough capacity and volume capability to perform as needed.

EXAIR Application Engineers are well versed in helping our customers determine line sizes and providing support for our products on their systems.  If you need help with an EXAIR product and how it integrates into your compressed air system, contact an Application Engineer.

If only we could call city engineers to help with traffic…

Lee Evans
Application Engineer
LeeEvans@EXAIR
@EXAIR_LE

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.

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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

Today We Say Goodbye

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

Today is a sad, happy, well let’s just say it’s a day here at EXAIR.   It is back to school time throughout most of the country and sadly enough, it is the last day of our Co-Op’s final quarter semester as a Co-Op.

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You may notice him from his star role in films such as, Escape To The Planet Of Professor Penurious, Will It Launch, Penurious 2012, What I Do, and The Professor “Raps”? I’m Speechless.   Yes, he is the first and only Co-Op here to get a face tattoo, for work purposes.   Needless to say the Co-Op program here at EXAIR is not the normal engineering Co-Op experience.

We like to think that we have given our Co-Op the experience of a lifetime.   The truth is, he has learned a good amount about compressed air and how to save it, mostly thanks to The Professor.  Below is Prof. Penurious in his casual Friday dress with the Co-Op and his trophy of things that didn’t make it through his time of use here at EXAIR.

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We all wish him a great final year at the wonderful University of Cincinnati, along with a great future even after he graduates.  Hopefully for him it will be far away from the Professor.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Learning Styles – We Have You Covered

Published on by Dave WoernerLeave a comment

In the engineering department at EXAIR, we feature a couple of different generations of engineers.  This generational difference leads to some great discussions about the times, politics, and pop culture.  I’m often defending people who do things a little differently than they did in the 70’s or the 90’s.  I hate defending this because I think we have lost some know-how and wisdom over the last couple generations, but I do think that there are more opportunities for folks, who learns things outside of reading a book.

In my experience people learn by three different ways.  People learn by seeing things, hearing things, or doing things. I learn best by seeing things and doing things.  If you try and teach me something over the phone without any visual representation I have a hard time understanding the subject.  If I can see a picture or a video on the topic, I will pick it up much better and will take away more than listening to a lecture or reading a book.  One of my favorite things is talking to a person who has been growing a garden, grilling a steak or fixing a leaky sink about what they know and their secrets to a successful project (often a plan and organization but that is another blog).

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Having said all that, today we have access to an enormous amount of information over the internet that we could never have accessed before.  This has the great benefit of opening new opportunities up to everyone. We don’t need to know everything that engineers had to know in the past, because we can look it up so much quicker.  It doesn’t pay much to have the dimensions of every thread memorized, because we can find it at our fingertips in seconds on a smart phone or laptop.

At EXAIR we are constantly mindful of a new generation of consumers that are using our products for the first time, and we want to provide as much material as possible to all of the different learning styles.  Because EXAIR is based in Cincinnati, Ohio, we cannot physically visit every customer that we have around the world, but we do try and expand our presence as far as possible.  Our best resource for dispersing our information is our website, EXAIR.com.

On the website we try to include as much new media as we can to explain how our products work and at which applications they excel.  In our Knowledge Base, we feature Case Studies, CAD Libraries, and Frequently Asked Questions to provide our customers as much information as possible about our products.  We do ask that you register to the website to receive this material.  To teach our visual learners, we create informal videos created by our application engineering department and post those on this blog, and we have Video Library.  For the audio learners, our application engineers are available to speak over the phone to answer any questions you may have.  For the tactile learners, we do offer all of our products inside the United  States and Canada on 30 day unconditional guarantee.  This allows customers to try our products and learn by doing.  These three methods allow any style of learner to understand our products, and use them to the best of their ability.

Dave Woerner
Application Engineer
davewoerner@exair.com