Tag: plastic air nozzle

Let’s Keep Things Clean: Advantages of the Flat Super Air Nozzle

Published on by John BallLeave a comment
Flat Super Air Nozzles have replaceable shims to vary performance.

A panel manufacturer was having some issues with black contamination affecting the powder coat paint.  They were using an overhead chain conveyor that would move the panels from the paint booth to the oven for curing.  At the end, the panel would be offloaded to a conveyor belt to move into storage for later assembly.  They were having quality issues with black specs that showed up on the gray paint.  They found out it was coming from the links from the overhead chain conveyor.  They contacted EXAIR to see if we had a solution for them. 

We reviewed the specifics of what was occurring in their application so I could understand better the nature of the problem. After evaluating a couple of options, I recommended two pieces of our model 1122, 2” Flat Super Air Nozzles.  This nozzle blows a 2” wide airstream with a powerful force to cover the width and depth of the chain links.  They were able to cut the flashing for the guard around the chain conveyor to blow the air.  One was located on the side of the conveyor, and the other was placed at the top of the conveyor.  The 2” Flat Super Air Nozzles were installed and oriented at a point along the travel, where there weren’t any panels on the hook supports.  This ensured that the debris was removed before the painting process began.  The issue was that debris mixed with the powder paint during application and then baked into the finish. The panels then had to be reworked or scrapped.  Once they installed the EXAIR Flat Nozzles, the quality improved immensely as they were able to remove the loose debris before raw panels were added to the conveyor.

To expand more on the EXAIR Flat Super Air Nozzles, they have a wide range of uses.  Their unique design utilizes a patented shim for improved efficiency, safety, and force range.   EXAIR has an easy way to change the shim to better suit different applications.  You can increase or decrease the force of the nozzle by just removing two screws and changing the thickness of the shim inside.  EXAIR offers a Shim Set to allow for adjustment to a range of forces to meet your needs and without overusing the compressed air.  Many times our Flat Nozzles are compared to plastic flat nozzles. Those nozzles do not have this capacity. They also tend to break when installed within harsh, abrasive or otherwise rough, industrial processes. 

If you have a “dirty” process, and you wish to blow it away in a safe and effective manner, EXAIR will have a nozzle for you.  We offer a variety of sizes, materials, and designs to best fit your application.  You can speak with an Application Engineer if you need more details.  The company above was glad that they did. 

John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

Where Did All The C Clamps Go?

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

Over the past week I visited a local company here in Cincinnati that utilized a decent number of flat plastic air nozzles on their production lines.   This style nozzle had been used for many years but were the reason their engineering department contacted EXAIR.   The nozzles they had in place were used in many different applications from ejecting bad parts, holding up box flaps, and even positioning product correctly on the production line.   Every nozzle was tied to a regulator somewhere on the machine and all of the regulators were tuned to different pressures.

The customer was experiencing, at certain points during the day, a pressure drop throughout the entire system that would cause packaging lines to shut down due to low air pressure faults. The customer called EXAIR because they determined the plastic nozzles were using too much compressed air and were also a constant maintenance problem. Primarily, they wanted to see if we had a solution to lower compressed air while still achieving the desired production results.

Being local we were able to visit the customer and after discussing the applications we set out through the manufacturing area to discover if we could offer solutions for the problematic areas. We got about 10′ away from a casing machine and I heard a loud hiss of compressed air.   This was even with my foam ear plugs in.  Once we reached the edge of the machine I was quickly able to trace the sound down to a plastic flat nozzle that had been mounted to the machine, broken and held back in place by a large C clamp like seen below.

IMG_5777.JPG

As we went through the rest of this production line and the rest of the packaging facility, it was clear the customer had settled on using flat plastic nozzles throughout the plant. Generally we see this because the nozzles are cheap – when you forget to consider operating and maintenance costs. This was not the only broken nozzle being held in place by a clamp and it is also the not the only one that was using more compressed air than necessary.

After finishing the tour and performing some tests here in our lab I recommended that they utilize our 1″ Flat Super Air Nozzle with a .005″ thick shim installed.   By installing the 1″ Flat Super Air Nozzle they are going to be able to mount the metal nozzles with minimal modification to their existing setup as well as lower air consumption and noise level. The metal construction makes them more durable and long lasting in an industrial environment. These nozzles will not break when an operator bumps it and the maintenance department will be able to reclaim all the C clamps that are distributed throughout the facility.

Once we have final numbers on how many nozzles have been replaced and what pressures each nozzle is operated at we will provide the customer the air consumption savings as well as the noise level reduction that they are seeing throughout the plant.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer Manager
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF