Tag: Frequently Asked Questions

How Versatile Are EXAIR Compressed Air Products?

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I wish I could quantify that, but we keep finding more and more applications for them:

Vortex Tubes are used all the time for cooling applications, down to MINUS 40 degrees (Fahrenheit OR Celsius…that’s the point where they’re both the same; no math required.) They also produce a HOT air flow, which we usually call “exhaust,” but some users actually use IT for heating, and call the COLD flow the “exhaust.”

The EXAIR Vortex Tube. Cold air from one end; hot air from the other. Fully adjustable. You can use either...it's fine with us; whatever you need.
The EXAIR Vortex Tube. Cold air from one end; hot air from the other.  You can use either…it’s fine with us; whatever you need.

Our E-Vac Vacuum Generators are popular for “pick-and-place” jobs…hook one up to a Vacuum Cup and you can move parts around all day long. One time, though, I helped a

customer who needed to “pick-and-place” individual small pieces of woven fabric, a lot like a coffee filter. Even our smallest E-Vac, supplied from a Pressure Regulator cranked all the way down, was too much…it would still pick up most of the stack. We found they could use a Model 120020 3/4″ Super Air Amplifier just fine…the Pressure Regulator was still cranked all the way down, and it picked them up one at a time.

No matter what you need to pick-and-place, we've got you covered.
No matter what you need to pick-and-place, we’ve got you covered.

Our Super Air Knives are perfect for blow off, drying, and cooling applications…whether you’re trying to rid your product of dirt/debris, water, or heat, a laminar curtain of adjustable air flow is a “textbook” solution. But I recently had the pleasure of helping a customer who needed to KEEP SOMETHING IN PLACE and called to ask about an Air Knife. They had small cups running single-file down a conveyor belt, with an overhead brush roller pushing down on them at one point so they could be treated on one side. Without something holding them in place, the tooling would simply push them off the side of the conveyor. It required frequent adjustment because they run different sized cups…and they almost always lost some cups when they switched to a different size, while “dialing in” the brush tension. By installing a Model 110036 36″ Aluminum Super Air Knife in place of the brush, they can hold any size cup in place with the downward air flow “curtain.” No more lost product when they don’t get the brush adjustment just right!

Continuous, even, fully adjustable curtain of air...EXAIR Super Air Knives come in lengths from 3 inches to 9 feet.
Continuous, even, fully adjustable curtain of air…EXAIR Super Air Knives come in lengths from 3 inches to 9 feet, in stock.

If you have a compressed air application you’d like to discuss, give me a call.  Perhaps we’ll find the next level of versatility!

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
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The Old One-Two: Super Air Knives And Super Air Nozzles

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The EXAIR Super Air Knife is THE ideal, efficient, and quiet solution for most any blow off application. We know this for a fact; we’ve been making them for years, folks all around the world have been buying them for years, and they keep coming back for more. They’re popular enough that over the years, we’ve introduced Mounting Systems and Plumbing Kits for ease of installation, and when Coupling Kits (to join multiple Super Air Knives together for greater lengths) became big sellers, we “upped our game” and started making Super Air Knives up to nine feet (108″) long. And certain applications (I’m looking at YOU, lumber and paper industries) order multiples of THOSE, and our Coupling Kits. Quite literally, there’s no job too big for EXAIR Super Air Knives.

EXAIR Super Air Knifes come in a wide variety of lengths to suit a wide range of applications.

No matter how long they are, though, the laminar, high velocity curtain of air they generate only moves in one direction. So, if there are significant geometric features (holes, bosses, recesses, “nooks & crannies,” etc.) to be blown off, we’ll have to look at something supplemental.

Enter the EXAIR Blowoff Systems…it doesn’t get any easier than this: an EXAIR engineered Super Air Nozzle, attached to a flexible, repositionable Stay Set Hose, mounted to a Magnetic Base.  Put a hard hitting, high velocity, pointed flow of air right where you want it.  If the next piece is different, that’s no problem – just bend the hose to re-aim the air flow.

Mag Bases come with one or two outlets. Stay Set Hoses come in lengths from 6″ to 36″.

No matter what the requirements of your blow off application are, we have an efficient, quiet, and safe solution.  If you’d like to find out more, give me a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
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Custom Air Amplifiers To Meet Most Any Requirement

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When I think of “special” in regard to Air Amplifiers, I’m more inclined to think of the applications they can be used in. I mean, the Air Amplifier itself is about as straight-forward as an engineered compressed air product can be:

Air Amplifiers use the Coanda Effect to generate high flow with low consumption.

Considering the simplicity of the product itself, they can be used for a large variety of “typical” applications:

  • Cooling
  • Drying
  • Cleaning
  • Ventilation
  • Fume Exhausting
  • Dust Collection

There are no shortage of “special” applications either.  They’re used successfully in Air Operated Conveyance applications (when the stronger vacuum head of a Line Vac isn’t required) and we’ve even got a customer who uses one instead of an E-Vac Vacuum Generator for a “pick & place” operation…they’re picking up small, porous fiber discs (sort of like a coffee filter) one at a time, and the E-Vac wanted to pick up a good part of the whole stack, no matter how low they turned the pressure.  And of course, I can’t think of anything more special about Air Amplifiers than this:

You have to read it to believe it.  Follow the link and click on “Case Study: Roaring Banana Breath”

With fifteen distinct models to choose from in a range of sizes (3/4″ to 8″,) materials (aluminum or Stainless Steel) and even a High Temperature model that’s rated to 700°F (374°C), we’ve still made a fair number of Custom Air Amplifiers too…thirty-four, to be exact, as of this writing.

I won’t bore you with all the details – I can’t, actually, because some of them are proprietary* – but here are some “regular” examples of “special” accommodations:

  • Connections: EXAIR Air Amplifiers have smooth bores on the inlet & outlet plenums that you can hose clamp a hose (or round duct) to if you need to get air flow from, or to, one place or another.  Sometimes, though, they’re going in to an existing system, so we’ve made them with flanges (150#RF and Sanitary Tri-Clamp, for example) or threads (NPT or BSPP.)  If you want to use something other than a standard hose or duct line, we can help.
  • Material of construction: Our durable, lightweight aluminum Super & Adjustable Air Amplifiers are just fine an awful lot of the time.  Our type 303 Stainless Steel Adjustable Air Amplifiers will hold up to heat and corrosives.  We’ve also in PTFE (Teflon™) as well as a range of metal alloys to meet specific corrosion or wear conditions.  If your environment calls for a little something extra, we can help.
  • Assembly: Super Air Amplifiers are fitted with a stock shim that gives you published performance.  We’ve got other thicknesses, though, if you need more (or less) flow, though.  Adjustable Air Amplifiers are, well, adjustable…you just thread the plug in/out of the body until you get the results you want.  Sometimes the user knows what shim they want in a Super Air Amplifier, or what gap their Adjustable Air Amplifier needs to be set to, and we can assemble it accordingly.  If you have a ‘tried-and-true’ performance setting and want it met right out of the box, we can help.
  • Assembly, part 2: Good engineering practices call for lubrication on O-rings and threaded connections, and we use high quality, general purpose compounds when assembling our Air Amplifiers.  These are detrimental, however, in certain situations (silicone exclusion areas, I’m looking at you.) If certain chemicals or compounds are prohibited by your application, we can help.

*Let’s say you’ve done the “heavy lifting” to call out one (or more) of these special design features.  If we make a custom product (and that’s not just Air Amplifiers, by the way) using directions based on your time and labor, we’ll treat that product as proprietary to you, and you alone.

EXAIR has 208 catalog pages worth of Intelligent Compressed Air Products on the shelf…8 of those pages are our Air Amplifiers.  If you want to talk about customizing one to meet your needs, give me a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
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Methods Of Heat Transfer

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“Nothing happens until something moves.”
-Albert Einstein

These five words are the foundation on which the science of physics is built upon. This statement not only applies to the things we can see, but to those we can’t…like heat transfer.

OK; technically, we CAN visually observe the EFFECTS of heat transfer…that’s called “reading a thermometer.” But the actual mechanism of heat transfer takes place at a molecular level, and concerns the rate of motion of those molecules: the higher the rate of molecular motion, the higher the heat of the material. Hence, the higher the rate of CHANGE of that molecular motion, the higher the heat transfer rate is.

All you need for heat transfer to occur is a difference in temperature between two materials. Contact, or even proximity, helps…but not always. More on that in a minute. And keeping at least one of the materials in motion can help maintain the temperature differential. We’ll unpack that a little more too.

Let’s start with the three ways that heat is transferred…what they are, and how they work:

Conduction

What it is: The transfer of heat between materials that are in physical contact with each other.

How it works: If you’ve ever touched a hot burner on a stove, you’ve successfully participated in the process of conduction heat transfer.

Convection

What it is: The transfer of heat through a fluid medium, enhanced by the motion of the fluid.

How it works: If you’ve ever boiled water in a pan on a hot stove burner, you’ve successfully participated, again, in the process of conduction heat transfer (as the burner heats the pan) AND convection (as the heated water in the bottom of the pan both transfers heat through its volume, and moves to the surface.)

Radiation

What it is: Remember what I said earlier about how you don’t always need contact or proximity for heat transfer? Well, this is it…the transfer of heat through empty space, via electromagnetic waves.

How it works: If you didn’t actually TOUCH the hot stove burner, but felt your hand getting hot as it hovered, then you’ve successfully participated in the process of radiation heat transfer. OK; it’s a little convection too, since the air between the burner and your hand was also transferring some of that heat. The best example of STRICTLY radiation heat transfer I can think of is the sun’s rays…they literally pass through 93 million miles of empty space, and make it quite warm on a nice sunny day here on Earth.

Regardless of how material, or an object, or a system receives heat, engineered compressed air products can be used to efficiently and effectively remove that heat.  For the record, they employ the principles of both conduction and convection.  If you’d like to discuss a heat transfer application, and the way(s) that an EXAIR product can work in it, give me a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
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