Tag: help

Supporting The Next Generation of Engineers

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

A while back, I was lucky enough to spearhead a donation from EXAIR to The University of Cincinnati’s 1819 Innovation Hub Makerspace. For the past several years, we have been sponsoring the UC Combat Robotics club, which uses the Makerspace to build its bots and learn more about the applications of its course of study. This facility is open to all students who attend the university. The course of study does not matter; the desire to learn appropriate usage of equipment and a determination to create are all that is needed.

The space puts every student through training for safety and manufacturing processes, if needed, and then the students can operate on their own. The staff in the space are often students themselves, or they are people with years of industry experience to share with the students utilizing the space. This 12,000 square-foot makerspace and fab lab is home to a variety of equipment that can all be seen on their equipment listing here. You can go in and learn how to use anything from a sewing machine or soldering iron, all the way up to a 4-axis CNC machine. If you just have an idea and desire to learn, the staff will even train you on how to make the idea come to life and do it all safely in a semi-controlled environment.

When we saw the need for safe, efficient use of compressed air in this space, EXAIR stepped in to help. We outfitted every air drop in the facility and every machine with an EXAIR VariBlast Precision Safety Air Gun w/ Chip Shield and Nano Super Air Nozzle. This will help keep all the operators safe by eliminating the risk of exceeding 30 psig dead-end pressure and also reducing the operating noise level to below the OSHA standard of 85 dBA, all the way down to 75 dBA. By keeping the entire facility uniform, they are also able to make purchasing new units easier when they are needed.

We also helped them assemble their new EXAIR Chip Trapper System to help recycle the coolant from their CNC machines and help them extend the life of their cutting fluid by being able to remove all the debris from their sumps, reducing the surface area on which bacteria can grow.

On top of both of these, we helped them to see how easy a Cold Gun is to mount onto the side of virtually any machine in their shop, even the industrial sewing machine, and showed them just how beneficial it can be. There was actually a group of students using one of the stationary belt sanders, and we were able to connect the Cold Gun to the closest air drop, use the magnet to hold it onto the housing of the sander, and position the single-point cold outlet to the contact point to keep the sandpaper and material cooler to prevent loading up of the sandpaper.

These were just a couple of the products we were able to share with them in order to help outfit their space with safe and efficient compressed air products. I’ve condensed the entire event down into a 50-second clip if you would like to watch. I feel like we need some classic Benny Hill music in the background.

I think the best part of this experience for me was the discussion that evolved as we unpacked all the items. We had already had lots of chatter back and forth around what their system is capable of and also what they plan to do with the EXAIR products. Then, as we are unpacking and discussing the capabilities, more applications started to come up. I have a feeling this is just part of what happens in this space. Ideas are born, then brought into fruition, all within these walls.

Special thanks to Benjamin Jones and his team for letting us be part of training the future leaders in the industry.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Please Wait For The Automated Attendant….

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

When you call a company to look for help, do you really want to have to dial a person’s name like you are on your old Nokia phone using the T9 keyboard, or do you want to hear a real person’s voice? (It’s okay if you are googling T9, I did it for you, and the best results are shown in the image below.)

Google results for T9 texting. My favorite part is the Reddit link on the right. r/dumbphones.

My answer is to speak to a real person. This is something I have always appreciated whenever I contact a company, whether it be to try and get information from them or to give information to them about EXAIR products. I understand that in some companies it helps with efficiencies and keeps cold-calling salespeople at bay (at least the ones that take no as the first answer). Yeah, automated systems may help reduce distractions for those who answer the phone, but at the same time, they may hinder someone who is trying to get a quick answer and wants to place an order.

Well, here at EXAIR, you don’t need to know how to spell names on your Nokia phone that you just racked up a high-scoring game of Snake on. Instead, you get a person who is a member of our Order Entry Team. They can actually help you submit orders, give chip estimates, product pricing, and even some lead times on stock products. Then, if you have technical questions or need something outside of that, they can bounce you over to us, the Application Engineering team. There’s a good chance you will hear less of our hold music than a full song or advertisement.

We will help you from there on out, even if it means placing an order. We not only try to be your one-stop shop for industrial compressed air products, but we also strive to be easy to do business with and get you the answers you need when you need them, not suspend you in a loop with our automated phone attendant until you discover the secret code to get to a real human.

If you have questions about EXAIR products or industrial compressed air processes, please contact an Application Engineer today.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

When To Ask An Expert

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

With the Springtime comes many outdoor activities in our house. Sometimes they are new, such as archery which just came about in our house in the last couple of weeks.  The other item that it is time for is our family garden. While we have not started any plants from seed this year, and the opportunity to get to a garden center to purchase plants may not happen, we still want to be prepared.  To do that, we prepared the same plot we have used in years past and laid down some landscaping fabric to try and kill off any unwanted weeds that have already started to sprout up through the dirt.

The next activity was to get the tiller out and perform a tune-up/maintenance on it. Sure enough, first, pull and the cord on the trusty engine lets go. The cord didn’t merely break, it looked like something from the Three Stooges as I almost fell backward from my pulling momentum and very nearly punched myself in the face. I proceeded to disassemble the pull-cord cage and found myself in unfamiliar territory.

Pull-Cord Assembly aka Punch-self-in-face-maker

Had this been another part of the engine, the carburetor, electrical kill switch, engine internals, or even the final drive to the tines, I would have been okay. Oddly enough, I have never had to replace one of these recoilers or the rope that comes on them. When you go to YouTube and search for a topic like this you will find a rather large amount of ways to perform a task like this.

Rather than doing that, I enlisted the help of a close friend who has worked for a lawn care/landscaping company for over a decade. He maintains every piece of equipment the company owns and uses. Needless to say, he has replaced quite a few pull ropes in his time.  When I called, due to social distancing we couldn’t meet in person, he, of course, asked several questions about the tiller and in the end helped me to make sure I had the correct replacement rope.

We then set off to walk through the process and the entire thing took less than 15 minutes.  When it was said and done the pull-start felt better than it had ever since I owned the piece of equipment and after sitting since last year still started on the second pull. Thank God for ethanol-free fuel that is still available at certain locations.

All repaired and ready to till!

The point of this story is, what is received and viewed as a simple task for one can be a monumental task for someone else. While my mechanical aptitude was sufficient, I lacked the training and understanding as to why you would perform this process in a given order. My friend, the expert, did not lack that at this point in time. This process was something that was second nature to him.

This is very similar to point-of-use compressed air applications and the EXAIR team. Our team has experience from a multitude of industries and we all focus on utilizing compressed air efficiently and effectively. If we don’t know the process (which is rare) we are willing to learn and ask questions until we understand enough about your application that we can make an educated recommendation for an optimal EXAIR product. We are all here to help each other and to help our customers achieve their goals, so contact us when you need an expert.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Putting In The Work: No Matter Where

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

Last week I was on vacation with my wife’s family.  We had the good fortune of going to Lake Norman, NC and renting a house for everyone to stay in.   While vacation was on a lake and we all had a boat load of fun (mainly because we had a pontoon boat for a week).  Work still needed to get done.   This wasn’t work from the Application Engineering position here at EXAIR.  This work was physically more difficult.

This was training for an event I will be doing hopefully within the next year.  I’ve been attending a Tuesday morning workout for the past six months or so with two other men, who are both Marine veterans and I thank them for their service.  This work we put in on Tuesday morning and a few other random times throughout the week is all for the same events.   The events are put on by a company called GORUCK.  (Yes, just like EXAIR, it is all CAPS all the time, one word.)  These events are classified as endurance events and are lead by either an active or retired Special Forces cadre.  There are different versions but they are all heald to the same standard for participants.  Put in the work, rely on your team, and everyone will get through it together.

At most of the events very few people know each other that well.  This makes forming a team within the few hours you are together very difficult.  That is until you are under a time hack when everyone has their weighted ruck on their back, you have a few hundred extra pounds of sand bags to carry and because it is fun to watch the Cadre gives you a casualty that now has to be buddy carried.  The main focus is to get people of all walks of life, all abilities, all physical aptitudes to come together, build into one another, and make sure everyone is at the end getting a patch to wear on their ruck.

This is why, on every Tuesday I try to put in some hard work mixed in with a lot of stairs.   While I was on vacation and could have easily let that weekly training go, I didn’t.  Instead I got out a deck of cards for the number of reps to each exercise, grabbed a 60 lbs and 40 lb sandbag and went to the tallest section of stairs we had close by, the dock stairs.

While going through the exercises, panting and glistening (for those that don’t know that’s the fancy word for seriously sweating), my youngest daughter came down to “help” me workout.  The look on her face was at first confusion, then after a brief talk and explaining I am trying to better myself by doing this, she switched to full on support.

Burpees have never felt so good until you have a 4 year old cheering you on.  Once I was done with all of my reps and had made over 6 trips up and down the steps with the 60 lb. sandbag I carried my sandbags and followed her in to the house for some well deserved breakfast.

This work could have been easily pushed to the side and not completed.  Instead, I embraced it and did it.  I was going to do the work even if anyone wasn’t watching because I want to better myself so that I may better any team that I am part of.

This same level of dedication is put in to everything we do here at EXAIR.  Customer service, production, assembly, product design, order entry, accounting, and marketing all dedicate to ensure that we fill the needs of our customers because we want to become a strong part of their team.   Whether it means digging deeper on testing a product in order to get some data at different operating pressure, or creating a 100% custom product that we have never manufactured before, we dedicate to the customer and ensure that all possibilities are exhausted so that the customer and EXAIR can both succeed.

If you have any questions about how EXAIR can help your team to reduce compressed air consumption, increase plant efficiency, and save energy through compressed air usage, please contact us.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF