EXAIR’s Turboblast Safety Air Gun – As Powerful as Olympic Weightlifters?

As a competitive powerlifter, I’m always excited to watch Weightlifting during the Summer Olympics. While the lifts themselves differ from power lifting competitions, it never ceases to amaze me how powerful some of the lifters are. Regardless of which style of lifting you participate in, one thing always rings true – consistency is key! That’s why here at EXAIR we’re committed to providing high-quality products that are shipped from stock the sameday. If there’s one thing you know you can always count on with EXAIR, it’s consistency. In every year of my tenure here (over 14 years), we’ve achieved a 99.8% or better on-time shipping rate, with the lone exception being during the COVID pandemic in 2020.

Olympic weightlifters aren’t the only ones generating power this week. EXAIR’s Turboblast Safety Air Guns are helping customers in facilities all over the world handle tough applications. When power is of the utmost concern regarding a blowoff, the Turboblast Safety Air Gun is the ideal fit – offering up to 23lbs of force with our largest nozzle.

See for yourself on video as the gun easily blows a large adjustable crescent wrench across the shop floor with ease:

Each Turboblast gun is also available with an optional adjustable gate valve. If the application requires a bit more “fine-tuning” than just a standard on/off, the adjustable gate valve can allow the operator to make finite adjustments on-the-fly without having to adjust the air pressure supplied upstream.

Now through the end of September, we’re running our Safety Air Gun Promotion. Order any Turboblast (or other air gun) and receive a free 1” Flat Super Air Nozzle. Get in touch with an Application Engineer today to discuss how we can help improve the efficiency in your blowoff processes.

Tyler Daniel, CCASS

Application Engineer

E-mail: TylerDaniel@EXAIR.com

X: @EXAIR_TD

Image courtesy of TheDigitalArtist via Pixabay Creative Commons License

Georges J Ranque: Father of the Vortex Tube

Georges J. Ranque is known as the inventor and father of the Ranque-Hilsch Vortex tube. The vortex tube is device that takes a compressed gas and generates hot and cold streams from a source of compressed gas. George accidentally discovered the phenomenon on accident while studying physics at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris France. Ranque was looking was performing an experiment on a vortex-based pump to vacuum up iron fittings; during the experiment he noticed that warm air was being expelled out of one side and cold air out of the other when he inserted a cone into one end of the vortex. In 1931 Ranque filed for a patent for the vortex tube and two years later presented a paper on it.

Georges vortex tube was all but lost and forgot about until 1945 when the German physicist Rudolph Hilsch published a paper on the device. This paper became widely read and exposed the vortex tube to the industrial manufacturing environment. This paper revived what was thought to be lost and led the vortex tube into what we see today.

How an EXAIR Vortex Tube operates

During World War 2 Georges Ranque started to develop different steels that would be used in military aviation efforts. He later went on to work at Aubert et Duval Steelworks as the Director of Metallurgical Laboratory. While at Duval he would continue to developing alloys for the aviation industry.

Interestingly, in 1972 he went on to publish a book on the search for the Philosophers Stone, a mythological chemical substance that Alchemist’s thought could be used to turn base metals into Gold. The following year in 1973 he passed away in his home just outside of Paris.

Here at EXAIR we have expanded the uses of Ranque’s original vortex tubes for various different cooling uses. The vortex tube can be found in our Cold Guns, Spot Coolers, and Cabinet Coolers. In many cases EXAIR’s spot coolers and cold guns have been used to replace coolant in simple milling and grinding applications. Also, EXAIR’s Cabinet Coolers have been keeping control cabinets from overheating for many decades. 

If you have any questions or want more information on how we use our vortex tubes to improve processes all over industry. Give us a call, we have a team of application engineers ready to answer your questions and recommend a solution for your applications.

Cody Biehle
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
Visit us on the Web
Follow me on Twitter
Like us on Facebook