Tag: food packaging

EXAIR Atomizing Spray Nozzles For Food Tray Mold Release Agent

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

PET (polyethylene terephthalate) is one of the most common plastics that we see on a day-to-day basis. It’s what they make water and soda (or ‘soft drink’ or ‘pop’, depending on where you live) bottles out of, along with a lot of other products you find on the shelves and in the refrigerated cases of your local grocery store. A couple of times a week, we cook up a nice piece of fish from the seafood counter at our corner grocery: salmon if my wife stops in; whatever white fish is on sale if I do. Whichever becomes that night’s dinner, in any case, is packaged in a PET tray and sealed with plastic film.

I recently had the pleasure of talking with a caller whose company makes those trays. Turns out, they begin life as great big sheets, before they’re cut into smaller rectangles and formed in a mold press. Most anything that’s formed into a shape like that, with force and heat, needs to have some sort of lubricant – called a release agent – applied to the surface to make sure it exits the mold quickly and easily. In ANY molded product application, it’s advantageous to use as little as possible, for two reasons: specialty chemicals like these release agents can get expensive – especially the ones for food, beverage, or pharmaceutical use – and also because any remaining agent will get sealed up with whatever’s getting packaged.

Anyway, my caller’s molding machine came with spray nozzles that, no matter how low the flow was regulated, still sprayed too much. That meant the trays had no problem at all with falling right out of the mold, but the excess release agent was oftentimes causing HIS customer’s plastic film to not seal properly onto the finished food product, and he’d recently gotten an earful about it. He wished there was something he could use that didn’t spray much more than a light fog, because his supplier for the premium food grade release agent he used was always bragging that a light fog was all that was needed. In fact, the supplier actually recommended an EXAIR Model AF2010SS No-Drip Internal Mix, Flat Fan Atomizing Spray Nozzle.

With a flow rate as low as 1.2 gallons per hour, a one-second ‘spritz’ means 0.04 fluid ounces (that’s about a quarter of a teaspoon) gets spread out over the 16″ width of the mold. Which is just enough to let the freshly molded tray fall right out, with almost no residue left over.

When not-much-more-than-a-light-fog is called for, look no further than EXAIR Air Atomizing Spray Nozzles!

Whether your liquid spraying application involves pricey fluids that you don’t want to waste, or if you just don’t want to have to deal with the mess of over spraying, EXAIR has a wide selection of Air Atomizing Spray Nozzles to choose from. If you’d like to find out more, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
Visit us on the Web
Follow me on Twitter
Like us on Facebook

Adjusting Mounting Angle Helps Food Packaging Manufacturer Enhance their Super Air Knife Blowoff

Published on by Tyler DanielLeave a comment

EXAIR’s Super Air Knives are the ideal fit for any application requiring a laminar “curtain” of air for blowoff purposes. The high-velocity airflow does an excellent job of cleaning off surfaces, cooling, and drying in a wide variety of applications throughout industry. These products are engineered to provide a consistent and reliable force across the full length of the knife, ensuring repeatable performance in any application.

The 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 for 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 key to any successful Super Air Knife application is ensuring proper plumbing is assembled to the Air Knife as well as the correct mounting angle for the blowoff. This was the case in a recent application I assisted with for a company who deals in packaging raw foods using a method to increase longevity. The foods are bagged where they’re submerged in a water tank and exposed to high pressures. This process results in a significantly greater ability to preserve the quality of the food and keep any bacteria at bay for longer than just simply sealing the bags alone.

Once the products emerge from the water bath, they’re placed on a conveyor to dry. EXAIR’s Super Air Knives are being used to blowoff any remaining water from the package before they’re boxed. Looking to speed up the process a bit as they had residual water remaining on the packages that was being dried manually, they reached out to EXAIR for some assistance in improving the overall result.

As you can see in the photo above, the knife has been installed blowing directly down onto the conveyor. When positioned in this way, the product is only in contact with the high velocity airstream for a brief moment. For any blowoff operation where products are traveling along a conveyor, we want to angle the knife against the direction of travel to maximize time in contact. By blowing against the direction of travel, we maximize the contact time and can dry the packaged food far more effectively.

A situation that originally started with the customer looking to either increase air consumption by adding thicker shims to their existing Air Knife or adding new Air Knives altogether was solved by simply adjusting the current angle of their existing installation.

In doing so, they saved what would’ve been unnecessary compressed air usage and were able to immediately case pack the food in boxes once it made it to the end of the conveyor. If you have an existing EXAIR product that you’d like assistance with, EXAIR’s team of Application Engineers is ready to take your call. Reach out to us today, and we’ll be happy to help you to determine the best products for your application!

Tyler Daniel, CCASS

E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com

Twitter: @EXAIR_TD

Application Database: Compressed Air Use in the Food & Beverage Industry

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

EXAIR uses many different methods to connect with our customers.  We have our website, social media, blogs, publications etc. We like to share solutions for some of the most common pneumatic problems in the industry.  EXAIR generated a large collection of application information where EXAIR products have already solved problems and improved processes.  We organized them by Application and by Industry.  In this blog, I will show you how to use the Application database; specifically, for the Food and Beverage Industry.

Compressed Air Systems are considered to be a fourth utility within industries because they use a large amount of energy.  Whether an air compressor uses fuel for portable units or electricity, it is important to use this system as efficiently as possible.  This would apply to the Food and Beverage industry.  EXAIR has a library of different processes in which we already improved these areas safely and efficiently.  If you are in the Food and Beverage industry, it would benefit you to take a peek at the implementations where we already improved, establish OSHA safety, and saved money.

Here is how you can find this library.  First, you will have to sign into EXAIR.  Click here: Log In.  Once you fill in the proper information, you can then retrieve a great amount of resources about EXAIR products that we manufacture.   The Application Database is under the Knowledge Base tab.  (Reference photo below).

At the Application Search Library, we have over one thousand application that we reference.  In the left selection pane, we organized then in alphabetical order under two categories, Applications and Industry.   (Reference photo below).

Scroll down in the selection pane until you come to the sub-category: Industry.  Under this Sub-category, you will find three selections that are related to this blog: Food and Beverage, Food Packaging, and Food Processing.  We have other applications that may relate to your process like; Beverage Bottling and Beverage.  You will find many applications that EXAIR has already helped to improve and it is documented.

Why is this important?  If you are a plant manager or owner, the value of the Application Database can improve your current processes with pre-qualified results.  Within the Food and Beverage industry, simple solutions can be found to address those “nagging” issues that you see every day.  For crisis situations and shutdowns, EXAIR categorized these applications in a way to reference quickly and easily.  And since EXAIR has a high volume of stocked quality items, we can get the parts to you very fast; minimizing downtime.

In today’s market, companies are always looking for ways to cut cost, increase productivity, and improve safety.  EXAIR can offer engineered products to do exactly that.  With the “been there and done that” solutions already described in the Application Database; you can have confidence in finding a way in solving pneumatic issues.  If you do not sign up at www.EXAIR.com and take advantage of these offerings, you will be missing out on a great tool in optimizing your compressed air system.

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

 

 

Solving Static and Increasing Print Quality on Food Packaging

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

Gen4 Static Eliminators

A yogurt company printed bar codes on every cup that they produced. This was necessary for registering and tracing their product. After failing a bar code reader quality test, they started noticing some print issues during batch runs. They would have to stop their system, clean the inkjet printer head, and scrap product that would not register with the bar code reader.

This affects production rates, scrap rates, and overall cost. They stated that they threw away 30 to 40 cases per batch of yogurt due to this problem. They had an EXAIR catalog where they found a similar application within our Gen4 Static Eliminator product line. They contacted us to see if we could find a solution.

With non-conductive material like plastic, static is easily generated; especially during cooler weather. Static can be in a negative state or a positive state dependent on the material. For opposite charges, things are attracted to each other and will “stick” like magnets. For similar charges, they will repel each other. The higher the static charge, the stronger the force.

For the company above, the yogurt cups moved along a 7” (178mm) wide conveyor before they reached the bar code printer. This movement causes static to be generated on the surface of the cups. But, what about the inkjet printer? The function of the printer charges the ink droplets for direction and positioning. Since the ink droplets and the cup surfaces have the same charge, the droplets were being “pushed” back toward the printing head (reference photo below). Thus, the ink would dry on the surface and affect the quality of the bar code.

Bar Code Printer

When it comes to removing static, EXAIR is a leader in this market. We have a large product line of different types of Static Eliminators. Our design generates both positive and negative ions to remove any type of static charge. Since we only had to remove the static from the surface of the cup, I recommended a Gen4 Ionizing Bar. With a quick static decay rate, we can remove the static right before the bar code printer with only one Gen4 Ionizing Bar. For this application, I recommended the model 8003 3” Gen4 Ionizing Bar and a model 7960 Gen4 Power Supply. Together, it was very easy to mount and start using. EXAIR stocks lengths from 3” (76mm) up to 108” (2743mm), and we can ship a solution the same day. When you are losing 30 to 40 cases, time matters. And for this company, they received the items the next day to correct the misprints and short printing runs.

Gen4 Ionizing Bar w/ power supply

When problems occur, time can be of the essence. This is why EXAIR stocks our cataloged items for fast delivery.  For the company above, they had an EXAIR catalog which helped them to find a solution. If you would like to have an EXAIR catalog, you can click here to get one.   After they started using the Ionization Bar, the static was removed, the bar code was clean, and the operation ran smoothly. If static is causing issues for you, you can contact EXAIR and speak to one of our Application Engineers. We will be happy to assist you.

John Ball
Application Engineer

Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb