I have a customer who works for a company that produces plain, acrylic sheets which are used to produce various products used in high end bathrooms. Generally, those products are bathtubs, shower surrounds, floor pans, etc.
Our customer produces the flat sheet which is produced by pouring a liquid resin between two glass sheets which is then cured to a solid phase. Once the glass molding material has been stripped away, the edges are finished and the sheet is washed and dried.
The drying part is where EXAIR 84” Long Super Air Knife comes into play. The customer’s sheet is two meters wide and so the 84” Super Air Knife provides a continuous curtain of air across the surface of the acrylic sheet to drive the rinse water off the sides and edges. Once dried, our customer lays a protective sheet of heavy paper between the sheets of acrylic to keep the surfaces from being scratched or otherwise blemished from rubbing during transport.
Prior to moving to the Super Air Knife for this production, the customer was using a series of 40 pieces of a flat, plastic, two inch wide, air nozzle made by a company who specializes in water nozzles. The nozzles themselves were designed to consume 24 SCFM @ 80 PSIG each. The customer had these mounted to a 1” pipe that was hung above the acrylic sheet. The problem was that these nozzles used so much air that they could barely keep 30 PSIG on the header pipe supplying them due to pressure drop in their system and the noise level was up over 90 dB. The result, poor blow off performance. The estimate for their air usage was in the range of 450 SCFM for this project.
After installing the 84” Super Air Knife, the customer was able to finally maintain a reasonable header pressure of 80 PSIG at the inlets to the Super Air Knife which provided for a solid and consistent blowing velocity all the way across the width of the material. The sound level was also able to drop down to a more pleasing 75 dB with implementation of the Super Air Knife. Finally, the air consumption was dropped to a more reasonable 244 SCFM for the 84 inch Super Air Knife. A 46% reduction on air usage.
If you have a wide format type of product that you are trying to cool, dry or blow debris from, consider the Long Super Air Knives. They will provide you with a forceful, even velocity across the full width of your material.
Neal Raker, Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com
Acrylic_Clear_1-4_001 image courtesy of thebaumans. Creative Commons license
