Tag: Ion Air Jet

Ionizing Points for Static Elimination Without Airflow

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

I almost wore three socks this morning: one on each foot, and one inside the sleeve of my shirt. I don’t know if it got in there through the agitation & spin of the washing machine, or the tumbling action in the dryer, but I know how it stayed there through the removal from the dryer, folding, and placing in my shirt drawer: static charge. This was evident from the ‘snap, crackle, and pop’ it made when I pulled it out.

Static charge is all around us. It’s mildly annoying in the clothes we pull from the dryer or the packing peanuts we can’t shake from our hands when unpacking from that new whatever-I-just-ordered from that website. It’s surprisingly uncomfortable when we touch the light switch after walking across a carpeted floor. And it’s terrifying when a lightning bolt hits so close that there’s no discernible delay for the thunder.

It’s also prevalent in many industrial processes: molding, trimming, wrapping (or unwrapping), bag & bottle filling, printing…just to name a few. Some materials are more prone to it than others, but all it takes is contact, and separation, of non-conductive surfaces to generate a static charge. The faster and/or more frequent the contact & separation, the higher the charge, and oftentimes there’s no better way to build up static electricity than sliding or rubbing those surfaces together.

EXAIR has a wide variety of Static Eliminator solutions: Super Ion Air Knives for webs or sheets up to 9 feet in width, Ion Air Cannons or Jets for more focused, conical ionized air blowing, Ion Air Guns for handheld operations, Super Ion Air Wipes for tube, pipe, extruded shapes, etc., and Intellistat Ion Air Guns & Nozzles for laboratory or clean room situations. Two of our Static Eliminator Products – Ionizing Bars & Ionizing Points – require no compressed air at all for operation, and one of those is the point (‘pun intended’ or ‘spoiler alert’ – you decide) of today’s blog.

The EXAIR Gen4 Ionizing Point is compact, versatile, and easy to install. It’s perfect for applications where even a light breeze worth of air flow would be disruptive or problematic. It’s also great for ionizing an existing air flow, like in a blower duct or air conveyance line. If limited space is a problem, it’s got the smallest footprint of just about any static eliminator on the market.

The EXAIR Model 8199 Gen4 Ionizing Point packs a LOT of static elimination in a small package.

They have impressive static dissipation performance as well, as seen in the table below. The only maintenance that’s required is a periodic cleaning of the emitter point (with the Power Supply OFF, using a soft bristled, dry brush). Should the emitter point become fouled, it can also be easily replaced.

If you’ve got problems with static charge, EXAIR has a comprehensive offering of solutions…give me a call to find out more.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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“It’s Not Rocket Science”, or How Compressed Air Has Straightforward Applications In Aerospace

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On the submarine I served on, many of us used math, specific to our jobs. Torpedo (and missile) fire control, navigation, reactor operations…even meal cooking…involved certain formulas to accomplish particular tasks. One formula we all knew and kept near & dear to our hearts, though, was:

Number of surfaces = Number of dives

And those who fly aircraft and spacecraft, in – and out of – the atmosphere, have a similar formula:

Number of landings = Number of takeoffs

While this certainly requires a great deal of skill of the operators (as does diving and surfacing a submarine), it also takes a great deal of technical acumen in the engineering and construction of those aircraft & spacecraft (and warships). Terms like “aircraft grade” inspire a high degree of confidence in the integrity of materials, and rightly so – the quality standards that manufacturers and suppliers are held accountable to are stringent and inviolate. That’s why aerospace professionals need reliable, durable, and effective equipment to do their jobs.

EXAIR Corporation has been providing this kind of equipment to the aerospace industry (and others) since 1983. Here are some examples of the applications we’ve worked with “steely eyed missile men” to solve:

  • A jet engine manufacturer makes a titanium assembly consisting of a honeycomb shaped extrusion bonded to a rigid sheet. The cells of the honeycomb are only 1/8” wide, and 3/8” deep. After fabrication, they’re washed & rinsed, and the tiny cells tend to hold water. They would invert & tap the assembly to try to get the water out, but that wasn’t always effective and occasionally led to damaging the assembly. To reduce the chance of damage (and loss) of an assembly, they built a cleaning station, using EXAIR Model HP1125 2” High Power Super Air Nozzles and Model 9040 Foot Pedals, for hands-free control of the high force blow out of the honeycomb cells. The results were increased production, decreased defects, and lower labor costs.
  • A machine shop makes composite material parts for the aerospace industry. Static charge would build up, causing the shavings to cling to most of the surfaces inside the machine. The vacuum system was unable to overcome the force of the static charge to remove it, so they called EXAIR. Our expertise in static elimination led to the specification of a Model 8494 Gen4 Stay Set Ion Air Jet System to direct ionized air onto the tool during cutting. This eliminated the static as it was generated on the shavings, allowing the vacuum system to perform as advertised. Not only did it make for a cleaner work station, the air flow provided cooling for the cutting tool, improving performance & extending life.
  • If a company works with metal parts, there’s a decent chance they operate a welding machine, and those things make smoke & fumes that, at best, are a nuisance, and at worst, are toxic. An airplane repair shop that has to weld in tight spaces needed a convenient, portable, compact way to evacuate the welding smoke and fumes. They chose a Model 120024 4” Super Air Amplifier. They’re capable of pulling in over 700 SCFM, and with a sound level of only 73dBA and lightweight aluminum construction, they’re an ideal fit for this application.
  • Certain satellites have components whose batteries must be fully charged to ensure that everything works just right. Because of the heat that charging generates, they couldn’t be charged with the spacecraft on the launch pad without cooling. Conventional methods of providing cold air (refrigerant based or cold water chillers) are too bulky, so they instead use a Model 3230 Medium Vortex Tube, capable of providing 2,000 Btu/hr worth of cooling air flow. This enables them to charge the battery until just prior to launch, making sure the batteries are as fully charged as possible, prior to deployment.
  • While the lion’s share of Vortex Tube applications involve the use of their cold flow, a number of folks do use the hot air flow, with great success. A major material supplier to the aircraft & aerospace industry makes a flexible, porous strand of material that, after fabrication, passes through a wash tank prior to cutting to size. They wanted to speed up the drying time, but it was impractical to use electrically powered hot air blowers or heat guns. By using an EXAIR Model 3275 Large Vortex Tube set to a 70% Cold Fraction, they’re able to blow a little over 22 SCFM of 220°F air onto the strand, which effectively dries it to their specification, quickly & safely.
These are some of the EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Products used in the aerospace industry.

Exacting jobs call for safe, efficient, and reliable tools. Even if your job “isn’t rocket science”, the value of the right tool cannot be stressed enough. If you use – or want to use – compressed air for such a task, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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“Math Wall” image courtesy of João Trindade, Creative Commons License

Static Eliminators Essential To Packaging Operations

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I had a headache the other day. Of all the things that can make me grumpy, nothing makes me grumpier than a headache. Luckily, there are over the counter medications that work quite well, and quickly, to boot.  And I had a brand new bottle of them in the cabinet.

When I opened the package and removed the tamper-resistant plastic band on the cap, it stuck to my hand when I went to drop it in the trash can.  This raised my grumpiness just a touch.  I shook my hand to try and get it off, and it fell behind the trash can.  My grumpiness elevated a bit further.  I hit my head (you know, the one I was trying to cure the pain in?) on the counter while bending over to retrieve it.  That activated my grumpiness alarm, which sounds just like mild profanity.  My wife silenced that alarm pretty quickly.

The plastic band stuck to my hand, of course, because it’s made of a non-conductive material, and peeling it from the bottle cap, which is also a non-conductive material, generated a static charge.  As a subject matter expert on the topic of static elimination, I am quite familiar with the phenomenon, the problems it causes, and, more importantly, the numerous ways to apply solutions to those problems:

  • One such solution was related to my problem with the tamper-resistant seal.  A mouthwash manufacturer was actually having trouble getting those seals ONTO the bottles on their packaging line.  The bottle caps themselves had so much static charge on them that they repelled the seal as the machine tried to drop it in place before heat shrinking it.  An Ion Air Jet solved the problem:
Gen4 Ion Air Jet ensures bottle caps & necks are static free for application of tamper resistant seals.
  • Speaking of plastic bottles, the finishing process after extrusion can leave small bits of plastic particulate behind, and static charge can keep them on the bottle.  This was a great fit for an Ion Air Cannon:
Gen4 Ion Air Cannon eliminates static & dust prior to filling bottles.
  • Sometimes, air flow isn’t necessary, like in the case of a film that is eventually made into single-use condiment packages, with a static charge that was high enough to fry the print heads that apply the label text.  An Ionizing Bar protects those print heads:
Initial static charge of almost 17kV (left) is almost completely dissipated by the Ionizing Bar (center) to just 0.04kV (right)

EXAIR Corporation’s Gen4 Static Eliminator product line offers a wide variety of options for total static control.  If you need to get rid of nuisance shocks, clinging dust, tearing, jamming or curling of material, misfeeding sheets or rolls, or any of the numerous other problems that static charge can cause, give me a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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What’s So Great About The Gen4 Ion Air Cannon Static Eliminator?

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

It’s bitter cold this week in southwest Ohio, and one of the consequences of that is dry air in heated indoor areas.  If you’ve walked across a carpeted floor and pet your cat (like I did the other day), you (and your cat) may have experienced a phenomenon known as dissipation of static electricity.

In my defense, Elle The Cat often looks down on me just like she does on Rocky The Dog. Neither of us care.

The relatively low static charge you pick up by shuffling your socks across the rug is pretty small, compared to the charge generated by:

  • High speed rolling & unrolling of plastic film on a shrink wrapper.
  • Plastic pellets traveling through a conveyor system to an injection molding machine.
  • Slitting or trimming of paper, laminates, sheets, etc.
  • Removing protective layers between sheets of delicate materials.

And these can cause issues year-round.  The problems associated with static charge in these situations include:

  • Nuisance shocks to operators.
  • Dust and debris clinging to product finishes and surfaces
  • Product clumping or clinging while in transit.
  • Thin sheets tearing, jamming, folding, or misfeeding.
  • Disruption of sensitive electronic sensors, switches, etc.

EXAIR Corporation has a variety of Static Eliminator Product solutions, depending on the specific needs of a particular application.  To answer the question in the title of this blog, though, the Gen4 Ion Air Cannon is quite versatile, and is often considered alongside our other products.  For example:

  • Gen4 Super Ion Air Knives come in lengths from 3 inches to 9 feet.  If you have a wide web, sheet, or plate to remove static charge from, they’re the best choice, hands down.  For narrower widths, or situations where you have to blow in from the side or at a certain angle due to physical interference, the Gen4 Ion Air Cannon’s small footprint and adjustable mounting bracket provide a great workaround.
  • Gen4 Ion Air Jets generate a focused, concentrated flow of ionized air, for spot cleaning of smaller parts.  Its compact design is ideal for installations in close quarters.  If you have some room, the Gen4 Ion Air Cannon actually uses less compressed air to generate a higher ionized air flow…and it’s quieter, to boot.
  • Gen4 Super Ion Air Wipes are made to blow off and remove static from pipe, cable, extruded shapes, etc.  They come in 2″ or 4″ diameters.  If your product is larger than that, an array of Gen4 Ion Air Cannons can accommodate that.
  • Gen4 Ionizing Points are often installed in ducts to ionize existing air flow.  Arrays of two, three, or four are suitable for ducts up to about 6″ in diameter, depending on the air flow rate.  For larger ducts (or very high flow rates,) Gen4 Ion Air Cannons can be installed to blow into a ‘Y’ connection in duct walls.

Regardless of the nature of the application, if you’ve got a static problem, EXAIR has a solution!

These are just a few of the myriad Static Eliminator applications that EXAIR Corporation has successfully solved over the years.  Many times, the details of the application make one particular product the clear choice.  When there ends up being more than one worth consideration, one of the others is usually the Gen4 Ion Air Cannon.

Again…that’s based on the details of the application, and we’re here to help with that.  If you’ve got a static problem, give me a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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