Vacuum pumps have vanes, electric motors, and bearings that can wear out.
A contact lens manufacturer called EXAIR to ask about our E-Vac Vacuum Generators. Their operation consisted of using a small vacuum cup to grab the contact lens for polishing. Due to the long hours of operation, their mechanical vacuum pump would start to malfunction. The vacuum pressure would start to decline, and the contact lens would begin to shift or fall off. This would affect the clarity of the lens, and it would have to be rejected.
Our company found that the vanes in the vacuum pumps would start to wear. They would have to shut down the process to recondition the vanes, causing down time. After a few times of refurbishing the pump heads, the bearings in the electric motors would then start to wear. A loud high pitch noise would be generated, indicating that the motors needed to be replaced. This would cause even more downtime.
After carefully reviewing the customer’s needs, I suggested the model 810002M E-Vac High Vacuum Generator. This model can create a vacuum level of 27” Hg with only using 2 SCFM of compressed air; perfect for holding the contact lens firm to the vacuum cup for polishing. The E-Vac has no moving parts or bearing to wear out. They use compressed air to generate a venturi vacuum, so the only maintenance is to clean or change the compressed air filter yearly. Its compact size made the E-Vac more versatile than the much larger vacuum pump that it would replace. The customer could mount the E-Vac much closer reducing the volume of air in the vacuum lines to evacuate. This gave them an almost instantaneous vacuum at the lens which could improve the speed of the operation.
If you wish to eliminate downtime to fix, change, or recondition motors and pumps, the E-Vac could be the vacuum pump for you. If you need help to size the correct model for your application, you can contact an Application Engineer at EXAIR.
John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb
Photo: Contact Lens by Andy Simmons. Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic.