Tag: dyno

Stories From The Field: Automotive Plant Tour

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

Throughout my years I have been in many manufacturing facilities. Oddly enough, I have seen nearly every part of a passenger car manufactured and then fully assembled. The amount of compressed air applications in automotive supplier and manufacturing facilities are tremendous. Here are some stories from just a few we have encountered over the years, and all of them can be found in our Application Database.

Air Wipe – How it works
  1. A component manufacturer, specifically a steering and transmission component manufacturer was having issues with machined parts coming out of a CNC machine with too much oil based cutting fluid on them and not passing inspection process because the oil would throw off the automated measuring system. The part was a splined shaft that the high surface tension oil stayed in the splines. The part was removed from the machine via robotic loader and set onto a fixture. The path to the fixture was outfitted with a Super Air Wipe so the robotic loader could move the part into and out of the air wipes’s airflow and remove the oil. The converging airflow of the Super Air Wipe was ideal to keep the peaks and valleys of the shaft clean of oil and they were able to direct oil back into the cutting machine so no separate collection system was needed.
Robotic Welder fitted with EXAIR Super Air Wipe

2. A seat bracket manufacturer had issues protecting the lenses on their vision systems from welding spatter. They were again able to reduce the replacement / repair downtime by installing a 9″ Super Air Wipe in front of the robotic mounted lens and keep the spatter / fumes from ever making it to the lens, resulting in expanded run times between repair / downtime.

Cooling with Air Amplifiers

3. A forging company manufacturing the pistons was having issues reducing the temperature of the pistons as they were assembled to the connecting rods. The solution for them was to install a series of Super Air Amplifiers over the fixtured, indexing line and at each dwell station a Super Air Amplifier would activate and cool down the assembly by moving large volumes of ambient air mixed with small amounts of compressed air onto the surfaces.

4. An automotive manufacturer had issues with stamping shavings and welding debris staying on the surface of parts and fixtures resulting in rework and defective parts. Implementing a series of Super Air Nozzles, and Super Air Knives resulted in debris removal that saved tooling rework as well as production reject parts.

5. Another automotive / recreational vehicle manufacturer needed help with their torture test machine for suspension components. They were utilizing fans to try and keep shock sensors cool and replicate air movement. electric fans were not able to provide a focused airflow and so enter the Super Air Amplifiers. These have also been utilized on engine torture test machines.

1 – Chevrolet Corvette C7 2014 – LT1 Engine Testing on Dyno

These are just a select few of the actual applications that I have actually help with over the course of the years. As a whole, we have helped endless number of automotive industry applications. It doesn’t matter if you are in the automotive industry or just a garage tinkerer, contact and Application Engineer and let us help you with your point of use compressed air application today.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

1 – Autoblog_gr; Chevrolet Corvette C7 2014 – LT1 Engine Testing on Dyno – retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3h8imnOPwU on 8/31/2022

Spills & The Not So Easy Way To Clean Them Up

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

Before I worked for EXAIR, I worked for a CNC manufacturer/ distributor here in Cincinnati.  We would constantly have machines in our showroom filled with cutting fluid and running demonstrations, training or test cuts for our customers.  The bad part was that these never happened in the same week, sometimes not even in the same month.  So to keep the machines clean we would have to empty the coolant after we were done.   The way we would always do this was with the EXAIR Reversible Drum Vac.

RDVFamily_300px

Our unit was not exactly treated with the utmost respect.  It would get thrown on a shelf or in a drawer of a tool box for weeks on end, taken to shows, on customer visits, and even left on a drum full of coolant.  The best part is that it always worked.  The unit we had, was over ten years old when I worked there and I had been with them for 5 years, it had never needed any service.   No matter what we did, the unit always pulled through and took up less room than a regular electric vacuum.

The event that sparked this chain of thoughts was a small (1 entire quart) spill of fork oil in my garage earlier this week.  As I was working on my race bike I accidentally knocked over a freshly opened quart of fork oil and didn’t notice until it was all drained right underneath of my motorcycle.   Unfortunately, I don’t have a Reversible drum Vac at home to quickly suck up the spill before it sets into the concrete so I started cleaning it with paper towels and kitty litter.   Now I have this giant pile of dusty oil soaked stuff in the middle of the garage that has been sitting for 3 days to make sure it is all absorbed.   If I had even had a Mini Reversible Drum Vac I would have been able to utilize my air compressor and suck up the spill, instead I now have an entire trash bag of mess to clean up and dispose of.

spill

This happens more often than one would think in car garages, and performance shops.   Rather than running for the kitty litter, give the EXAIR Reversible Drum Vac a test and find out how much easier it is to suck up that coolant or oil spill straight into a 5, 30, 55 or 110 gallon drum.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF