Well it’s that time of year again, at the time of writing this blog thousands are lining up in Augusta Georgia ready to see the 87th edition of the Masters Tournament! Some go for the high level of talent and golf that is played over four days. Others go for the cheap Concessions foods! I mean come on $1.50 for an egg salad and Pimento Cheese Sandwich! Sign me up!
But here at EXAIR we happen to have a few things that can help you with your Golf Game!
Forgot your Tee? No Worries we have you covered with our E-Vac Vacuum Generators! Check out the video below! (They can also be used to suction cup the ball out of a Gators mouth, RIP Chubbs)
On a serous note, when you’re not using an E-Vac as a golf tee, they are very commonly used in applications for bag and package opening, label placement, vacuum forming, leak testing and pick and place applications.
EXAIR Also has accessories to round out vacuum cup systems including vacuum cups themselves, mufflers, check valves, vacuum tubing and fittings.
2. Stuck in a sand trap and really need to get it with in a foot to knock down that par? Again we have you covered the Line Vacs can convey your ball with in inches of the hole. So all you’ll have to do is just tap it in! (Just below the best clip of Happy Gilmore is the line vac conveying some golf balls!!)
While the line vac could help you take a few strokes off your golf game, they will also help you get rid of your buckets and ladders, for filling and moving product. These small units can move large volumes of material.
They are a perfect solution for moving things like plastic pellets, textiles, food products, pills/tablets, granules and much more. By adding a small amount of compressed air through the directed nozzles on the Line Vac, you will create a vacuum on one end and a high flow of air on the other to lift and or push your material up and over to a new location.
Even though I would love to pull a air compressor behind my cart and see what people say at my local course! Both the Line vacs and E-Vacs have great industry uses. If you have anything you need to move or convey give us a call. We have a team of application engineers here M-F 7AM-4PM!
Line Vac + Hose or Pipe + Compressed Air = Instant Conveyor System
Today, dear reader, we’re going to explore the factors that contribute to the particular greatness of our Sanitary Flange Line Vacs:
Common industrial piping connections are difficult to sanitize, and offer ample breeding ground for bacteria.
Clean In Place capability. Many industrial fluid piping installations are made up of threaded or soldered connections, like those shown in the photo to the right. These products are easy to work with, readily available, and relatively inexpensive. They’re also unacceptable in facilities that require frequent cleaning to eliminate contamination – biological and otherwise – from their products & processes. Equipment in pharmaceutical, food production, and dairy farm facilities must be able to be sanitized effectively, so they’ll all use pipe & fittings that comply with specifications set forth in ISO Standard 2852 (Stainless steel clamp pipe couplings for the food industry) specifications for dimensions, surface roughness, materials, and assembly & hygienic requirements. While they’re known by a number of names – Tri-Clamp, Tri-Clover, S-Clamp, Sanitary, 3A, among others – they’re all aimed at compliance with ISO 2852. And EXAIR Sanitary Flange Line Vac products are compatible with any of them.
Sanitary Fittings come in number of configurations for quick & easy “making & breaking” for cleaning.
Diverse range of applications. While food & pharma are, by far, the main users, the ease of connection (and disconnection & reconnection), smooth ID specification for pipe, durability of stainless steel construction, and elimination of seams in fittings are all advantageous for other users as well:
A chemical company needed to remove long strands of cotton fiber away from a process, and convey it over a 60ft run to a scrap bin. The smooth ID of sanitary-grade stainless steel piping allows them to use a Model 161150-316 1-1/2″ Sanitary Flange Line Vac for reliable conveyance of this material, with no hang-ups or clogging in the long run of pipe.
An ammo manufacturer uses our Model 161200-316 2″ Sanitary Flange Line Vacs to convey small shell casings, in bulk from where they’re pressed, to where they’re loaded. They, too, like the smooth, seam-free pipe for conveyance, and the durability of all stainless steel construction. Another benefit is the quickness and ease of breaking & making the connections, as each Line Vac is used to convey these casings to multiple loading stations.
Sanitary Flange fittings make it easy to keep the inlet of this Model 161150-316 1-1/2″ Sanitary Flange Line Vac protected while not in use (left). The spring-loaded clamp makes it easy to swap out the cap for a barb fitting (middle) for use with a flexible suction hose (right).
Type 316 Stainless Steel Construction. Stainless Steel is specified for material construction for a number of reasons such as durability, aesthetics, and corrosion resistance. There are many alloys, and most will give you the smooth & shiny surface that folks think about when they think of stainless steel. Type 316, due to its hardness and particularly high resistance to chloride pitting corrosion, is extraordinarily popular in food & pharmaceutical application.
EXAIR Sanitary Flange Line Vacs come in four popular sizes, and are ideal for applications in the food and pharmaceutical industries…and others.
If you’ve got bulk material to move from “point A to point B”, EXAIR has a number of solutions to choose from. If you want to find out more, give me a call.
Russ Bowman, CCASS
Application Engineer EXAIR Corporation Visit us on the Web Follow me on Twitter Like us on Facebook
So you are thinking about using a Line Vac… Is it time to replace that ladder and bucket, and automate? There are many factors involved when deciding to use a conveyor system such as EXAIR Line Vacs. First of all let’s take a look at your product that needs conveyed. Will the integrity of your media be compromised by adding this much air to it? How heavy is it? What type of (how much) surface area does it have?
You know your media better than most. You should be able to answer most of those questions pretty easily, but what about the weight? For the weight, we work best knowing the bulk density, or pounds per cubic foot. If you do not readily know, this is easily found by finding the weight of your media in a box (or container). Then take the total cubic inches of the box (L x W x H) and divide that by 1728 (cubic inches per cubic foot), this will give you the cubic feet of that box. Then you simply divide the weight by the cubic feet, and you now have the density.
Line Vacs can convey many things.
Next we need to focus on your conveyance run. We would like to know what type of container is your product sitting in? A super sack, a hopper, a drum, a box? And where is it going? How far away is the destination hopper, dumpster, assembly station, etc.? This will help us determine the type of fitting or tools necessary to extract or release the media. How high do you need to go? How far horizontally? Our Line Vacs, are amazing, but they do have their limits. We will also need to know if there are any turns, and at what angles. Turns are many times unavoidable, but will have an adverse effect on the conveyance run as the airflow is halted and or deflected. Is there a way to minimize or eliminate the turns?
The final question is; how many pounds per minute do you need to be conveyed?
With the size, mass, and geometry of your parts, along with the vertical lift length, and the horizontal conveyance length, added to the turns and twists, you are just about ready to call one of our our application engineers for recommendations. We have some comparison materials for conveyance rates, to get you close to your actual needs. Here are some published conveyance rates as well:
There is one more part to this equation. What type and size of Line Vac will you need? EXAIR has many types of Line Vacs to choose from. As with most products, we have options that take into consideration the temperature and the abrasiveness of your product. We also have options to fit the type of conveyance hose or pipe you want to use , such as sanitary fittings, or threaded. And since we manufacture these right here in Cincinnati, OH, we can make custom Line Vacs for customers fairly quickly. We have designed and manufactured them with custom bolt on flanges, special materials or inlet sizes to name a few.
EXAIR Line Vacs: For bulk material conveyance through lines from 3/8″ to 6″, in aluminum, 303SS, 316SS, or abrasion resistant hardened alloy, available from stock with the widest variety of connections in the industry.
Please do not hesitate to call. We will be happy to help you with any technical questions about our products.
Application Engineer
Brian Wages
EXAIR Corporation Visit us on the Web Follow me on Twitter
With countless number of different Models to fit every application, EXAIR Line Vacs are used to convey everything from the lightest of packing peanuts to heavy steel shot. They’re versatile, reliable, durable, and incredibly easy to install and operate.
EXAIR Line Vacs use a small amount of compressed air to generate a powerful vacuum by a Venturi effect. The unique design of the generator creates a high velocity of air to create a low pressure on one side and a powerful thrust on the other. The Line Vac can pick up and move solid material from light and fluffy batting to dense, heavy and abrasive material and pieces. They can transfer product horizontally up to 100 feet (30 meters) away and vertically up to 20 feet (6 meters) high. You can watch a video on the operation of a Line Vac HERE. Compared to other vacuum or conveying systems, the EXAIR Line Vacs are very quiet, rugged, and powerful. They are exceptionally simple to install and solve many “bucket and ladder”, loading and scrap removal applications. EXAIR makes a variety of Line Vacs in different sizes, styles, and materials to best fit your application.
The standard Line Vac is the most versatile product in this family. EXAIR stocks a wide range of sizes, materials, and styles for targeting the best solution for moving material. We have two types of connections, slip-on ends for hose connections and threaded ends for pipe connection. EXAIR can swap the connections with a slip-on hose on one end with a threaded connection on the other. They range in diameters from 3/8” (10mm) up to 5” (127mm). We manufacture the Line Vacs in aluminum, 303SS, and 316SS; but don’t let that deter you if your need them manufactured in any other type of material. We have high temperature models that can withstand temperatures up to 900 deg. F (482 deg. C). These Line Vacs work great in applications for loading plastic pellets in hoppers, discarding scrap pieces, trim removal, and transferring material. If an operator has to carry a container of dry material and climb stairs, a Line Vac could be a much better alternative.
Heavy Duty Line Vac: Hardened Alloy Construction and High Performance
The Heavy Duty Line Vacs are made from a hardened alloy steel for abrasion resistance. The generators inside these Line Vacs are more powerful than the standard models; so, that they can also convey heavier materials at higher conveyance rates. They can reach rates as high as 40 lbs./min. (18.2Kg/min) of material. With the hardened alloy construction, they are great for sand blasting applications, ceramic, glass and steel shot. They are manufactured with inlet and outlet connections for ship-on hoses or threaded pipes. EXAIR stocks the Heavy Duty Line Vacs in the range from ¾” (19mm) to 3” (76mm) for both hose and NPT connections. These Line Vacs are our most powerful design with great wear resistance.
EXAIR’s Light Duty Line Vac
On the other end of the Line-Vac spectrum, EXAIR also manufactures the Light Duty Line Vac. They use much less compressed air than the other Line Vacs which work great for moving lightweight materials over short distances. They can also be used for removing smoke and fumes from a work area. The Light Duty Line Vac ranges from ¾” (19mm) up to 6” (152mm) diameter for slip-on hose connections. This two-piece design provides an effective way of moving material at a lower cost. It can be used in applications like hopper loading, fiber tensioning, filling operations, and smoke removal. For moving material within a short distance, the Light Duty Line Vac could be the proper product to use.
Model 161200-316 – 316 Stainless Steel Sanitary Flange Line Vac
Our latest engineering design within the Line Vac family is the Sanitary Flange Line Vacs. They can fit within sanitary piping systems to convert pipes into a useful conveyor for bulk material and waste removal. They use an ISO2852 flange for easy disassembly and cleaning to reduce bacterial entrapment. They ae made from 316 stainless steel material for superior corrosion resistance. They come in four different sizes to fit the sanitary flanges from 1-½” up to a 3” flange. For sensitive applications where cleanliness is a major requirement, the Sanitary Flange Line Vac are manufactured for these conditions.
With all of the EXAIR Line Vacs above, they can be sold as kits. A kit will include a filter, regulator and a bracket. (A bracket is not sold with the Light Duty Line Vac kits.) The filter will help keep the Line Vac clean as well as the product that it is conveying. The regulator is a great tool to vary the conveyance rates for better control. The bracket helps to mount the Line Vac to a sturdy base for support. A useful accessory to conveniently hide the compact Line Vac for ease of use and operation.
If you have any questions on how our Line Vacs can help save you money give us a call! One of our application engineers will be happy to assist!
