Tag: compressed air products

Success! A Cabinet Cooler Story

Published on by jasonkirbyLeave a comment

The main production line of a high-capacity fiberglass insulation manufacturing facility faced significant challenges due to fine airborne dust and elevated ambient temperatures. This situation adversely affected the control cabinet, which contained delicate variable frequency drives (VFDs) and programmable logic controllers (PLCs), leading to recurrent thermal shutdowns.

The initial cooling system of the plant depended on standard intake fans and paper filters. However, within a matter of days, the filters became entirely obstructed by fine glass fibers and dust particles, leading to internal cabinet temperatures exceeding 115°F (46°C). In a bid to alleviate the situation, maintenance technicians often resorted to opening the cabinet doors and directing conventional floor fans at the components. Unfortunately, this temporary solution exacerbated the problem by dispersing highly conductive and abrasive dust onto the live circuit boards, significantly increasing the safety risks and jeopardizing the integrity of the components.

The engineering team, in search of a durable and maintenance-free solution, reached out to an application engineer and subsequently acquired a NEMA 4 NHP Cabinet Cooler System.

The plant staff swiftly installed the compact system within minutes by utilizing a standard electrical knockout located on the enclosure’s top. They effectively sealed the old, leaking fan vents and connected the cooler to the existing factory compressed air line using the provided automatic drain water and dirt filter separator.

The system completely transformed their operational reliability through two distinct phases of automated protection:

  • Active Cooling: When the internal cabinet temperature reaches the pre-set thermostat limit, the system’s internal vortex tube transforms the compressed air into a chilled, 20°F (-7°C) airstream without using a single moving part or chemical refrigerant. This cold, clean air was distributed directly onto the hot VFDs, quickly dropping internal temperatures back down to a safe 95°F (35°C).
  • Non-Hazardous Purge: Once the target temperature was met, the modified solenoid valve closed but continued to pass a minimal, continuous stream of 1 SCFM of compressed air into the cabinet. This constant airflow maintained a continuous positive pressure inside the cabinet. This positive pressure acted as an invisible shield, physically blocking the fine fiberglass dust from creeping inside through small door seams, wire conduits, or microscopic gaps.

The manufacturer successfully resolved their summer downtime issues by implementing the EXAIR NEMA 4 NHP Cabinet Cooler System. This system ensured that the cabinet remained sealed, free from dust, and maintained an optimal temperature. With no moving parts susceptible to wear, the plant was able to discontinue weekly filter cleaning, enabling maintenance teams to concentrate on ongoing production instead of managing malfunctioning electronics.

If you have questions about the Cabinet Cooler Systems, or anything regarding EXAIR and our products, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Jason Kirby
Application Engineer
Email: jasonkirby@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jk

Designing for Reliability: The Advantage of No Moving Parts

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

In industrial environments, reliability often starts with simplicity. Every motor, bearing, belt, blade, or other moving part added to a system introduces another potential point of wear or failure. When engineers are designing equipment for long-term operation, one of the simplest ways to improve reliability is to reduce the number of moving parts.

That is a major advantage of EXAIR compressed air products.

Fewer Moving Parts, Fewer Failure Points

Traditional industrial equipment often relies on electric motors, fans, pumps, or mechanical components to create airflow, cooling, conveying, or vacuum. These solutions can work well, but they also introduce components that eventually require attention.

Bearings wear. Motors can overheat. Belts stretch or break. Filters clog. Mechanical components require lubrication and preventive maintenance.

Many EXAIR products accomplish similar industrial tasks using compressed air with no moving parts.

With no motor to burn out and no bearings or belts to replace, maintenance requirements can be dramatically reduced.

Reliability Across the Plant

The no-moving-parts design can be found throughout the EXAIR product line.

Super Air Knives and Air Nozzles provide engineered airflow for blow off, drying and cooling without fans or rotating blades.

Proper position on Super Air Knives

Vortex Tubes and Cabinet Coolers provide cold air for spot cooling and electrical enclosure cooling without refrigerants, compressors at the point of use, or moving components inside the cooling device.

Sub-zero air flow with no moving parts. 3400 Series Vortex Tubes from EXAIR.

Air Amplifiers entrain large volumes of surrounding air using a small amount of compressed air, providing high-volume airflow without an electric fan.

Model 120024 4″ Super Air Amplifiers are commonly used to exhaust welding smoke and fumes.

Line Vacs convert ordinary pipe or hose into a material conveying system without motors, bearings or mechanical pumps.

The Line Vac conveys scrap trim quickly and easily, and can be sized for most any product.

E-Vacs generate vacuum directly from compressed air with no moving components, making them well suited for applications where dependable vacuum generation is important.

Designing Maintenance Out of the Process

Maintenance teams spend a significant amount of time responding to equipment that has worn down, overheated, become contaminated, or simply reached the end of its service life.

Instead of asking, “How easy will this equipment be to maintain?”, engineers can sometimes ask a better question:

“Can we design the maintenance requirement out of the application?”

A compressed air product with no moving parts doesn’t eliminate every maintenance consideration. Compressed air still needs to be properly filtered and supplied at the appropriate pressure. But eliminating mechanical components can remove several common failure modes from the process entirely.

Reliability Isn’t Just About the Product

Unexpected equipment failure can mean much more than replacing a component. It can result in production downtime, lost product, emergency maintenance labor and missed delivery schedules.

That makes reliability a design consideration—not simply a maintenance consideration.

When evaluating a new blow off, cooling, conveying or vacuum application, consider not only whether a solution can perform the job today, but also what will be required to keep it performing years from now.

Sometimes the most reliable moving part is the one you never needed in the first place.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer
E: JordanShouse@exair.com
O: (513) 671‑3322
F: (513) 671‑3363
A: 11510 Goldcoast Dr Cincinnati OH 45249
www.exair.com

Find time on my calendar by scheduling a meeting here.

Cabinet Cooler Systems Protect Against Heat Related Failure

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

Electricity generates heat — there’s no way around it — and heat is bad for electrical and electronic components. Studies show that an 18°F (10°C) rise in operating temperature will cut the average reliability of typical modern electronic components in half. If you’re concerned about the reliability of your equipment, it stands to reason that you should have that same level of concern for what’s protecting it.

Fans in the panel walls that pull outside air through are a cheap & easy way to provide a cooling airflow for the components inside. They work just fine as long as the fan is properly sized, AND the environment is clean enough (remember, anything in the air is going to get inside your panel), AND the ambient temperature doesn’t get too high. Filtering the air being pulled in can help with contamination, but you have to keep an eye on the filter to make sure it doesn’t get clogged. And, in humid areas, fans will draw that humidity (and the potential for condensation) right past all those current carrying devices.

Panel air conditioners are one of the most common methods when fan cooling won’t cut it for any of the above reasons. They solve the problem of humidity, but their cooling capacity is reduced by elevated ambient temperatures. Environmental contaminants can clog the filters and foul the coils, so keeping up on their cleaning & maintenance is crucial.

Heat exchanger type (air-to-air or air-to-water) panel coolers are also subject to failure if they’re not properly maintained. Air-to-water types rely on a refrigerant powered chiller for the water, which has the same drawbacks as a panel air conditioner. It just may not be in proximity to the panel.

Vortex Tube products, like EXAIR’s Cabinet Cooler Systems, have no moving parts to wear or electric motors to burn out. They just need a source of clean compressed air, and they’ll run darn near indefinitely, maintenance free. That’s really all you have to do to prevent their failure — and the failure of the electrical and electronic components in the panel they’re installed on.

Inside, outdoors, high temperature, dirt/dust/humidity, corrosive and classified environments are no problem for EXAIR Cabinet Cooler Systems

If you have an electrical panel with critical equipment in it, you’ve got a lot of options for heat protection. If you want the most durable & reliable method, you’re looking for an EXAIR Cabinet Cooler System. We can help get you the one you need with just a few key pieces of data. You can even use that data to select the right one yourself. If you’d like to find out more, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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How Can I Stay Calm When My Control Panel’s Overheating?

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

We’re in the dog days of summer (in the Northern Hemisphere) for sure…or, as we call it, “Cabinet Cooler Season.” If you’re having heat-related problems with a control panel, there are plenty of cooling options out there, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find one that’s as durable, reliable, available, and easy to install as an EXAIR Cabinet Cooler System. All we have to do is find the right one for your enclosure, and we have a couple of different ways to do that:

Cabinet Cooler Systems Sizing Guide: We’ve had this on our website, and in our catalog, for years now. We can also email you one, if you want to print it out & fill in the blanks. Then, you can either email it back, or you can call us with the data. It only takes a minute to do the calculations, and we do it over the phone all the time.

Cabinet Cooler System Calculator: This one’s for the do-it-yourself-ers, and it uses the exact same formulas that an Application Engineer will use if you submit a Sizing Guide. There are still some situations where you might need to contact us — if your enclosure is in an explosive environment, an area with a hazardous classification, or if the heat load is outside the parameters of our stock Cabinet Cooler Systems, the Calculator is going to politely decline to make a selection and refer you to an Application Engineer. Of course, if you have ANY questions about the application or the Cabinet Cooler products, don’t hesitate to call, even if the Calculator doesn’t make you.

Here’s what we’re going to ask for, and why:

  • Enclosure dimensions. To calculate the heat transfer surface area
  • Current Internal Air Temperature. This is the starting point for figuring out the internal heat load…how much heat the components inside the box is generating. This needs to be the air temperature – don’t use a heat gun, or you’re going to give me the surface temperature of something that may or may not be close to what I need. Just put a thermometer in there for a few minutes.
  • Current External Air Temperature. We’re going to compare this to the internal air temperature…the difference between the two is proportional to the heat load. Also, if there’s anything cooling the enclosure right now (like circulating fans; more on those in a minute), this reading is key to figuring out how much heat they’re removing.
  • Maximum External Air Temperature. How hot does it get in the area on, say, the hottest day of summer? We’ll need this to calculate the external heat load…how much heat the enclosure picks up from its surroundings.
  • Maximum Internal Temperature Desired. Most electrical and electronic component manufacturers publish a maximum operating temperature of 104F (40C) – it’s kind of an “industry standard.” Based on this, a lot of us in the enclosure cooling business set our products’ thermostats to 95F (35C) – if we’re maintaining the air temperature a decent amount cooler than the components are allowed to get, history and practice has shown that we’re going to provide more than adequate protection. If your enclosure houses something with more sensitive temperature limitations, though, we can work with that too…that’s the only time you’re going to want to put something other than 95F (35C) in this field.
  • Cabinet Rating. This is all about the environment…we offer three levels of protection, per NEMA standards:
  • Other: If the enclosure is mounted to the side of a machine, or a wall in the plant, you really don’t need to put anything there. If it’s outside and exposed to direct sunlight, tell us what the surface finish (i.e., polished metal, painted grey, etc.) is so that we can account for solar loading too. If anything else is unusual or peculiar about the application, let us know that too.
  • My Cabinet Is… Not Vented, Vented, Wall Mounted, Free Standing, Fan(s). We’ll use what you tell us here to verify the heat transfer surface (a wall-mounted cabinet’s back surface isn’t a radiative surface, for example.) Also, I mentioned fan cooling before, so without further ado…
  • Fan diameter or SCFM. If there are fans circulating air into (and/or out of) the enclosure, they’re providing a finite amount of cooling right now. Proper installation of a Cabinet Cooler System is going to require their removal. Running a Cabinet Cooler System on a vented enclosure is just like running your air conditioner with the windows open. So, if we know the size (or the SCFM…sometimes there’s a label on those fans, and we LOVE those folks who do that) then we can use that, and the temperatures you gave us above, to take the fan cooling into account.

Once we (or the Calculator) have that data, we’ll calculate the heat load & specify the right system. Easy as that.

Before I go…here’s a nice little video, walking you through the Cabinet Cooler Sizing Guide. Yes, I just made you read the book before watching the movie…feel free to tell me which one you liked better.

Cabinet Cooler Systems are in stock and available for same day shipment with an order received by 2pm EDT. If you have a panel that needs cooling, we can fix that right now…give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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