Tag: custom air knife

Creating Custom Solutions for Specific Applications

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

At EXAIR we are proud of our ability to ship our stock and catalog products the same day or the next day on orders received before 2:00pm ET. If you need a replacement part, or a new solution altogether, we can likely get the product to you in no time at all. There are certain applications, however, where the solution is more specific, and our stock options are not going to work out best. There may be a need for a different material, or a specific geometry to get the results the customer is looking for. For instances like this, we work with our customers to create a special, non-stock option.

I was recently working with a customer that needed an Air Knife to cool their material coming out of a hot process. This is a common application for our Air Knives, but for this particular customer, the shape of the Air Knife wasn’t going to fit in their machine. After some discussion, we determined that a curved Air Knife was going to be the best fit (pun intended).

After the customer provided some initial specifications, we put a drawing together. With some back and forth, reviewing drawings, and signing off on final designs, we set to work, producing their specially designed product. Within a few weeks, we were able to provide the specific solution to meet their needs.

If you have an application that needs a more tailor-made solution, give us a call!

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

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Customize Air Knives Specific to Your Application!

Published on by Tyler DanielLeave a comment

EXAIR’s Super Air Knife utilizes a source of compressed air to create a laminar sheet of high velocity air. This supplied compressed air mixes with ambient air that is entrained into the primary airstream. The Super Air Knife entrains ambient air at a rate of 40:1, making it VERY effective in a variety of drying, cleaning, and cooling applications. Available in lengths ranging from 3”-108” and in a variety of different materials of construction, there’s a Super Air Knife available for just about any application. Any time you have product moving along a conveyor that needs to be cleaned, dried, or cooled off, a Super Air Knife is the ideal fit.

The Super Air Knife is available in aluminum, Type 303 & Type 316 stainless steel, as well as in PVDF with Hastelloy bolts for extremely corrosive applications.  While there are numerous options available off the shelf ready to ship same day, not all applications can be served by a stock option. Since EXAIR handles all of the manufacturing of these products in our sole facility in Cincinnati, Ohio, we have a great deal of control over the manufacturing process. If your application cannot accept something right off the shelf, we’re constantly producing special customized knives to fit any requirement.

Any of our knives can be manufactured in a special length if a stock length won’t fit in your application. We’ll use the same design and profile and can build it to the precise length you require in order to fit perfectly onto your machine. If the dimensional profile of an existing knife isn’t suitable, we can change that too! The Super Air Knife shown below utilizes a very thin design and has been completely modified to achieve the thinnest overall profile possible.

All Super Air Knives come stock with ¼ NPT air inlets and ¼-20 tapped holes along the bottom that can be used for mounting. Unfortunately, that isn’t always going to work for every application, so we also manufacture specials with custom air inlets as well as additional mounting holes to fit right onto any custom bracket. The photo below shows a modified stainless steel Super Air Knife with additional mounting holes machined onto the end.

We don’t just offer them in different shapes and sizes as a special, but we’ve also manufactured stock length knives out of entirely different materials. Shown below are two knives of different materials that aren’t already on the shelf. On top is a knife manufactured from PVC and on the bottom a glass filled PEEK material with brass hardware and a PTFE shim. In this application, the customer was noticing ground interference due to the aluminum knife construction. They specified this particular material and we were able to machine a knife completely customized for this application.
Each and every year new requests come across that is something we haven’t done before. Just because you don’t see it in the catalog doesn’t mean it isn’t possible when you deal with EXAIR. We’re here to make sure you get the most out of our products, and sometimes custom features or materials are necessary to get that accomplished. Contact an Application Engineer today if you’d like to discuss your application and begin the process of identifying your next custom solution!

Tyler Daniel
Application Engineer
E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_TD

EXAIR Manufactures Custom Solutions with Precision and Speed

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

Customs
An Air Amplifier with a PTFE plug (left,) a curved Super Air Knife (center,) and a flanged Line Vac are just a few ways EXAIR has provided custom solutions.

Because EXAIR designs and manufactures our own products here in Cincinnati, we can take advantage of the speed, control, and flexibility that comes with full service manufacturing. If you need a customization of a current production product or if you would like to start a compressed air application from scratch, we can probably help. This is true throughout our entire product line, the following custom examples are of our Super Air Knife products.

Do you have an application that may not be best served by one of our stock Super Air Knife products? While we have quite a variety of both materials, sizes, and connection types sometimes a special application requires a special solution. For this reason,  EXAIR manufactures special Super Air Knives suited EXACTLY for the type of application or environment that it’ll be operating in.

Unique applications are fairly common, and the Super Air Knife provides a great solution to many of them.  Consider these situations:

  • A machine builder had to fit an air knife in a 43″ channel.  We had it covered: we made them a custom (non-stock) 43″ 303SS Super Air Knife and shipped it in three days.
  • A user needed 15″ (and only 15″) of air flow.  A Model 110018 18″ Aluminum Super Air Knife, off the shelf, would provide an “overflow” which would disturb product in the vicinity of the blow off.  We had it covered…a custom shim can be made to provide 15″ (and only 15″) of air flow out of an 18″ Super Air Knife.  It only takes a couple of days to get the special shim. We can make shims to center the airflow, keep it all on one side of the knife, have it come out two separate areas etc.
  • Our customer needed the lightweight of the aluminum air knife, but the ambient air temp was causing the stock plastic shim to melt and cause leaks. So we made a custom 4″ Super Air Knife and installed a Stainless Steel Shim.

custom air knives
If your application is more challenging than a custom shim, we’ve also made Air Knives with (left to right) curved radius, special material (glass filled PEEK shown here,) flat, double-sided, and even one with end-mount threaded holes.

We’ve also made a variety of special Air Knives, when more than just length is a consideration.  So, even if your application is “Unique” it’s very likely that we still have you Covered. Give us a call and we can prove it to you!

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer
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Custom Shims – Literally A Breeze For EXAIR

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

As proud as we are of being able to ship most any catalog product, same day, from stock (99.9831% of the time for on-time shipping in 2017…22 years straight for 99.9% or better,) we take a certain amount of pride in our ability to offer custom solutions for challenging applications as well. Our Engineering and Production teams have a deep well of resources (knowledge, experience, and capability) to draw from, which allows us to meet those challenging applications head-on, in short order.

The one I’m writing about today isn’t exactly one of those challenging ones…

A machine fabricator had a special need for an Air Knife. It had to be Stainless Steel, and it had to be 30″ long. No problem so far…that’s a Model 110030SS 30″ Stainless Steel Air Knife, and it’s on the shelf. Thing is, they only needed 26″ worth of air flow; a full 30″ width was going to disturb, and maybe damage, the edges of the sheet of material that the air was being blown onto.

So we made a custom shim for the Air Knife.  Now, we make these all the time, in all kinds of configurations…hence the term “custom.”  Since this one was blowing onto a web where they didn’t want to disturb the material on the far edges, we made this shim to provide 26″ of flow, on center.  We could just as easily made it to provide 26″ of flow starting at one end or the other, or a specified distance from one end or the other.  Or 13″ of flow on both ends, with 4″ of no flow in the middle, for a total of 26″.

If your application is more challenging than a custom shim, we’ve also made Air Knives with (left to right) curved radius, special material (glass filled PEEK shown here,) flat, double-sided, and even one with end-mount threaded holes.

Regardless of how challenging (or not) your compressed air product application is, we’re here to discuss, any time you’re ready.  Call us.