Tag: industrial

EXAIR’s Commitment to Sustainability

Published on by exaircorpLeave a comment

April 22nd is as important as ever at EXAIR

Every year, as the world celebrates Earth Day, we reflect on our environmental impact and commitment to sustainability.  This is significant at EXAIR, because it marks the annual milestone for assessing our progress and environmental goals.  As an industry leader in energy-saving and efficient products, connecting our corporate habits to environmental impact is in our nature. 

This year, we have focused on how to maintain our sustainability efforts and help provide unique solutions for industrial challenges, while also engaging with our community.  Our solutions range from optimizing compressed air applications, to utilizing innovative products to filter and reuse machine sump coolants.  We’ve also become increasingly aware of the need to conserve and properly spray water and other fluids requiring atomization.  In each case, we recognize the benefit provided for the application in terms of throughput, efficiency, and energy/material conservation.

Sustainability:

This year, our machinists collected the remnants and scraps from every CNC and lathe at EXAIR, sorted and stored them by material type, and arranged for their recycling.  We filled dozens of 55-gallon drums with wastewater, aluminum, 303 and 316 stainless steel, and brass, providing them to a local recycling center in the Cincinnati community. 

We also recycled 100% of our cardboard and mixed paper products, 80% of the trash placed in our dumpsters, and 100% of our wastewater, wood, and plastics. 

We continue to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels by focusing on local and regional vendors, preventing long delivery distances.  And, we send over 90% of our invoices electronically, eliminating the need for physical transit via postal trucking.

All the while, we look for ways to do more.

Industrial Challenges:

Our Application Engineers have provided assistance and support for customers in a myriad of industries; everything from ATEX areas in petrochemical facilities, to precision blowoff in food and beverage plants.  In all of these applications, they take the time to understand the applications so that recommended solutions minimize environmental impact and maximize the use of any energy required to solve the problem. 

EXAIR’s patented designs have a proven track record of reducing energy consumption, making them the go-to answer for environmentally conscious companies.

Community Engagement and Corporate Stewardship

Beyond our immediate operational impacts, we remain committed to the benefit of community engagement. This past year saw EXAIR’s first sponsorship of the University of Cincinnati’s Combat Robotics Team.  The young engineers who design, build, and compete in this combat robotics arena are doing so with EXAIR’s support and financial backing. 

This Earth Day, we invite other companies to join us in rethinking their processes to be more sustainable. Every step towards this goal, no matter how small, contributes to a larger change.  At EXAIR, we are proud to lead by example, showing that business success and environmental stewardship can go hand in hand.

We look forward to another year of innovative solutions, community involvement, and environmental stewardship. Together, we can make a significant impact.

Lee Evans, EXAIR

Engineering Makes The Difference In Spraying Application

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

The Paint Line Engineering Manager for a major agricultural & industrial equipment manufacturer wanted to improve the efficiency of their paint lines. They had “halo” systems through which large parts passed for primer & paint coatings, which were equipped with inexpensive liquid-only spray nozzles:

Liquid-only spray nozzles lack the control and efficiency of engineered solutions like EXAIR's Atomizing Spray Nozzles
Liquid-only nozzles lack the control and efficiency of engineered solutions like EXAIR’s Atomizing Spray Nozzles

You can get a whole handful of these and it’ll still cost you less than one of our Atomizing Spray Nozzles will.  If you don’t have any particular concerns about efficiency, spray pattern adjustment, droplet size or flow control (and a lot of applications don’t require this, and that’s fine,) then these will work GREAT for you.  And again, they’re abundant and cheap.

That wasn’t the case here – turns out, good quality paint is expensive, and every drop wasted adds up.  Getting a fine, even coating on parts of different sizes & shapes, every time, requires precision control of the flow pattern.  And design of an automated system benefits from a wide selection of options to choose from.

Enter the EXAIR line of Atomizing Spray Nozzles.  With (90) models to choose from, we can cover (literally) darn near any spraying application you can come up with.  If you know what flow rate and/or spray pattern you’re looking for (like a Paint Line Engineering Manager would,) then selection is quick & easy.  Paint consumption is down, quality is up…and the reliability of the new system means they’re spending less time and resources on cleaning & maintenance. For the record, the halo system ended up looking like this:

EXAIR Atomizing Spray Nozzles provide efficient, reliable coating.
EXAIR Atomizing Spray Nozzles provide efficient, reliable coating.

If you’d like to find out more about how engineered products, like EXAIR’s Atomizing Spray Nozzles, can make a difference to your operations…and your bottom line…give me a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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Insulating a Cabinet Can Help to Reduce Overall Heat Load

Published on by Neal RakerLeave a comment

Insulated Cabinet  Insulated Cabinet2

I was working with a customer the other day who had a control panel located in a very hot environment next to a steam turbine in a power plant. The panel already had a Cabinet Cooler System working to keep the internal space cooled. However, due to some faulty temperature data about the surrounding environment, the customer had underestimated the heat load required in the application. As a result, his control cabinet was running a little higher than he wanted it to in terms of temperature. His Target was 95°F but he was running a solid 105°F inside the cabinet.

After we discussed the application a bit further and he sent some photos of the Cabinet, I learned that there was a rather large, hot turbine, just inches away from this panel. I also determined that the customer had installed our Cabinet Cooler on the top of the panel and was feeding it with proper compressed air to allow it to work at full capacity.

This is where some thinking about other strategies when considering how to reduce heat load on a cabinet come into play. Namely, passive methods of adding insulation to the exterior of the panel as well as employing heat shields between the heat source and the cabinet. Both methods are good ways to passively reduce the amount of heat load that needs to be delivered from a Cabinet Cooler to the cabinet.

In this application, the customer not only insulated his whole panel, but also the in-coming compressed air line to keep the heat from the turbine from sinking in through the walls of the cabinet and the compressed air pipe. After he made the suggested changes, the customer was able to reduce his cabinet temperature by the needed 10°F to keep a safe, 95°F inside the cabinet.

Neal Raker, Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com

Don’t Waste Money On Your Waste Removal

Published on by Dave WoernerLeave a comment

Lately, we have been receiving calls from customers that are looking for a wet/dry vac that they are accustomed to seeing in the form of an electrical vacuum for their home work shop.  They call us wanting a general clean up vacuum for their shop.  The items they are looking to clean up are coolant, dust and chips.  Our solution for this is to run two vacuums, and most people are asking why can’t it do both.  The answer – cost.

Generally, people seeking EXAIR’s pneumatic vacuums already see the value in the durability of a vacuum with no moving parts to maintain or replace when comparing to electric vacuums. It is the simplest of dollar savings,  the longer the product lasts and is maintenance free, the more money you will save from the absence of repair parts or new vacuums. And electric vacuums are notorious for burning up motors and not lasting within tough industrial environments. You can read about additional features/benefits within EXAIR’s pneumatic vacuum line here and here, but I will talk about our products specifications in detail.

EXAIR has two categories of vacuum, wet vacs and dry vacs.  The original wet vac for vacuuming coolant, swarf, or oil is the Reversible Drum Vac (RDV), used to easily empty and fill coolant sumps quickly. The Chip Trapper features a filtration system which removes chips and debris that is within the coolant, keeping the coolant clean, extending the coolant life and minimizing surfaces for bacteria to grow.  The Reversible Drum Vac and the Chip Trapper Systems use 19 SCFM of compressed air at 80 PSIG of and can fill a drum with 55 gallons of water in 90 seconds. These workhorse vacuums will last many years and withstand the rugged treatment found in hardworking manufacturing facilities.

Drum Vac

In the other category of  our industrial vacuums are the “dry” vacuums.  This term “dry” is a little ambiguous, because the vacuums will be able to move some liquid.  For instance, the liquid coating a chip or spills on the shop floor can easily be picked up with the dry vacuums.  We have a number of dry vacuums available:  The Chip Vac is a continuous duty vacuum used for general cleanup around machinery. The Chip Vac drum lid assembly can be used from drum to drum to aid in separating and recycling materials. Our Heavy Duty Dry Vac is best for applications vacuuming heavy materials, abrasive medias or longer distance (20′). And the Heavy Duty HEPA Vac is designed to provide protection from airborne particulate and is suited for dusty environments.

Exair-heavy-duty-HEPA-vacuum

To compare EXAIR products with other pneumatic vacuums, let’s look at the Chip Vac (40 SCFM at 80 PSIG) and the RDV above (19 SCFM at 80 PSIG). Combining the two vacuums you would require (59 SCFM at 80 PSIG. If you search long enough, you could find a pneumatic vacuum that is advertised as wet/dry, but this ability comes at a cost.  The most obvious cost is the upfront purchase price, which is consistently much higher than the combined cost of the (2) EXAIR units.  Also the units range in air use from 68 SCFM to 110 SCFM.  That is up to 86% more air required!

Let’s assume that you did run both constantly.  The wet/dry vac will cost you $0.14 extra an hour to run, assuming that your compressed air cost is $0.25 per 1,000 SCF.  That is really an unfair comparison to our products though, because we could have (2) vacuums operating at different locations in the plant accomplishing twice as much work.  Even still the (2) EXAIR units will save $810 per year with 250 working days in a year and 24 working hours in a day.

$810 per year may not sound like to much to you.  What if we change the scenario? How much air can you save? Let’s say you run a large wet/dry vacuum, which consumes 110 SCFM, everyday for 8 hours over 250 working days. The wet/dry vacuum will use 52,800 SCF per day or 13,200,000 SCF per year.  This compress air will cost you $3,300 just to compress that air. By comparison, the Chip Vac will only cost you $1,200 per year to run in compressed air.  Using the Chip Vac instead of the wet/dry vac, will save you $2,100 per year. in compressed air operating costs.

Dave Woerner
Application Engineer
Davewoerner@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_DW