Tag: electrostatic meter

EXAIR Static Eliminators can eliminate the charge and shockless ionizers are electronically powered to produce a bulk of positive and negative ions. Read more!

Intellistat® Ion Air Guns™ and Gen4® Ion Air Guns

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

As EXAIR expands our Static Elimination product line, we now offer two different types of Ion Air Guns; the Intellistat Ion Air Gun and the Gen4 Ion Air Gun.  Both units are designed to blow air to remove static from a distance and to remove any pesky debris.  The ions that are created are both positive and negative to neutralize any type of static on the material surface.  They are shockless and are both ergonomically designed to reduce fatigue.  They are OSHA compliant for both noise levels and dead-end pressure.  In this blog, I will cover the features of each product.

The model 8193 Gen4 Ion Air Guns are designed for rugged areas to remove static and blow-off debris in industrial environments.  They have an armored high-voltage cable to resist abrasions and cuts and a 10-foot (3 meter) length to give plenty of reach.  The air flow is created by an air jet to increase the velocity of the ionized air while reducing compressed air usage.  As more industrial components are being made with plastic materials, static electricity will continue to be a big issue.  Dirt, dust, and plastic flashing will migrate and stick to the surfaces because of the attraction due to static charges.  This additional force makes it very difficult to remove contamination unless you remove the static first.  EXAIR offers different packages to get the most out of our product for your application.  The best areas where the Gen4 Ion Air Guns can be recommended are inside manufacturing plants, automotive plants, packaging areas, shipping departments, injection molding, etc.  Generally, the Gen4 Ion Air Guns will be used in tougher environments where durability is required. 

The model 8500 Intellistat Ion Air Gun, is designed for removing static in more “sensitive” areas, like labs, clean rooms, electronics, medical items, glass, etc.  The patented design uses a low voltage operation for generating positive and negative ions to remove any type of static.  EXAIR has earned an ISO 14644-1 Class 5 clean room rating for the Intellistat Ion Air Gun, making it ideal for clean rooms with delicate processes.  The polycarbonate construction makes the unit very lightweight and ergonomically safe, and the plastic design is preferred for these types of “clean” areas.  A feature that I really like is the red and green LED indicator lights to signify ionized air production.  It gives feedback to the user that the unit is functioning properly.  This system comes complete with the Intellistat Ion Air Gun, 6mm compressed air line, and a 24Vdc power supply.  Some target areas for this product would be for processes that require certain cleanliness standards, such as scientific research labs, solar panel manufacturing, and biotechnology industries to name a few.

EXAIR manufactures a large line of Static Eliminators.  I covered the Ion Air Guns above.  From now until March 31st, 2024, EXAIR will be giving a free AC Sensor, a $76.00 value, as a promotional item with a qualified purchase of any Static Eliminator.  If you would like to discuss your application and potential static issues, you can contact an Application Engineer at EXAIR.  We will be happy to help.

John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

Active vs Passive Static Elimination

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

When static is an issue, there are two primary ways to eliminate it – Active Static Elimination, and Passive Static Elimination. But which method is better? To answer this, we need to know the difference between them:

Passive Static Elimination, as the name suggests, removes static passively. It is often in the form of a bare wire, or some type of conductive material like copper, which is used to provide a path for the static charge to dissipate. The advantages of this are that once it is in place you can forget about it (kind-of – we’ll come back to this). This type of static elimination doesn’t use any power, and has basically no operating cost. The downside to this solution is that the conductive material needs to be in contact, often dragging along the surface. This means that the eliminators can wear down over time, leading to them needing to be replaced (so you can’t quite forget about it!). If your product is delicate, then the contact from the eliminator can damage the surface. Additionally, passive eliminators are likely to collect dust and debris, which may be transferred to your product. Finally, a passive eliminator will have a difficult time making contact with shapes of varying size and complexity.

Static Eliminators

Active static elimination, such as the static eliminator product line from EXAIR, offer a variety of ways to eliminate the static on a surface without ever touching the product. Right away, this overcomes the downsides of passive eliminators just mentioned. If your product has a complex shape, the ionized airflow from many of our Gen4 products can be directed to contact every part of it. Without direct contact, active static elimination isn’t going to damage the surface either. There is also no concern about contamination of the product. In fact, our compressed air operated line of static eliminators are fantastic at removing dust and debris from a surface. Finally, our active static elimination products are not going to wear out over time the same way a Passive solution will.

On top of these great benefits, EXAIR will honor a 30-day guarantee to test our products in your facility.  As well as honor a 5 year built to last warranty on compressed air products and a 1-year warranty on any electrical component.

If you have an issue with static that you would like to discuss, please give us a call.

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

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Handheld Cleaning of Parts In A Clean Room

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

A few years ago, we released a handheld ionizer like no ionizer EXAIR has made before. The Intellistat Ion Air Gun was the first EXAIR product to carry a Clean room certification. The certification is for any rated Class 5 clean room and controlled environments per ISO 14644-1. This wasn’t the only revolutionary part of the Intellistat Ion Air Gun, it also used a 24VDC power transformer and had indicator lights to showcase proper operation or a malfunction. Most importantly of all, it can leave a balance of +/- 30 V.

Along with these functional benefits, we wanted the gun to be ergonomic and that includes a lightweight trigger pull along with an easy to use hook which permits users to easily store the gun when not in use. The entire ergonomic housing is of static-resistant polycarbonate while the replaceable emitter point is constructed of stainless steel. All of this leads to performance that speaks for the amount of design that went into this gun.

As shown in the table above, when utilizing the gun at 30 psig inlet pressure, it will only consume 2.7 SCFM all while still providing static-eliminating blowoff that will knock down a static charge on surfaces that the ionized air stream touches. 30 psig would be ideal for lightweight debris at inspection or packaging workstations where operators need to provide a final blowoff and remediation of static before the final seal of the package. If more force is needed, the unit can be operated all the way up to 125 psig inlet pressure. The Force/Discharge table below showcases that you can get up to .1 pounds of force out of the engineered nozzle on the Intellistat and that will dissipate a +/-1,000 V static charge to less than +/- 100 V charge within 0.6 seconds.

Being able to vary the amount of force with the operating pressure is nothing new to EXAIR compressed air products; this is one of the key benefits to the versatility of this gun. Being able to move it from a final inspection/packaging station that doesn’t require a lot of static removal or debris blowoff and then also being able to get into a production/assembly area where more force and static dissipation are needed, and you can utilize the same static eliminating gun at both.

If you want to discuss how the Intellistat Ion Air Gun can fill the need your static-ridden process has for blowoff and remediation, please contact an Application Engineer today.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Varistat Benchtop Ionizer Solves Static Cling Problem With Tape Backing Strips

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

Technicians at an automotive manufacturing plant apply pieces of adhesive tape to parts. They cut the tape to length, remove the plastic backing strip, and stick the tape in place. Due to the static charge on the backing strip, it would stick to their hands when they tried to drop it in the trash can at their work station.

They purchased & installed an EXAIR Model 8600 Varistat Benchtop Ionizer above the trash can. As they peeled the backing strip off the tape, the constant stream of ionized air dissipated the static charge, allowing the strips to simply fall into the receptacle.

Lightweight and compact, the Varistat Benchtop Ionizer isn’t limited to benchtop installations.

Before installing the Varistat Benchtop Ionizer, the strips would also cling to the plastic liner in the trash can. Because the static charge has been removed, the strips don’t cling to the sides anymore, so when the liner bag is full, it’s easy to pull it out, tie it up, and not drop any strips that used to cling to the top of the bag.

The Varistat incorporates EXAIR ionization technology to supply a stream of ion-balancing airflow to remove static charge and blow away the particulate that the static charge was holding on the surface, with hands-free operation and without the need for compressed air. The Varistat is manually adjustable and provides full coverage static elimination for workbenches, parts assembly stations, web cleaning…anywhere that point of use static elimination is needed. It can reduce a 1,000V static charge to just 100V in 0.8 seconds, and is engineered to fit various industrial applications & unique processes with user-friendly features like an adjustable stand, selectable input voltage (120-240VAC), a variable speed fan, replaceable foam intake filters, and adjustable polarity for ionization balance (+/-100V, manually adjustable to <10V).

If you’d like to find out more about the Varistat Benchtop Ionizer – or any of our Static Eliminator Products – give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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