Tag: service

Basketball Season Has Come To An End

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

This past weekend was one filled with many emotions in the Farno household. It was the tournament weekend for my youngest daughter’s basketball team, which I was the assistant coach for. This was our second season as a team, and we still had to learn a new dynamic this season because we added a player, and we were bumped up in our league after a strong performance in the tournament last year.

With that, came a season that did not have as many wins when you look at our record. You wouldn’t know it because of how these girls played for the full season though. Not once did we have a girl want to quit or mention that they weren’t good because we were losing. This is due to the families of our teams believing in them and our coaching position and style. Our head coach continually pushed these girls that wins and losses happen. Is it fun to win? Yes, is it fun to lose? No. What can we do about it when we lose? We can evaluate what went well, what didn’t and did we improve over the last time we stepped on the court. We didn’t sugarcoat every loss, we also didn’t tear down and focus only on the negative. Instead, we worked on skills and then we worked on their mental perseverance. When they would get out hustled or when fouls didn’t seem to get evenly called, we would remind them and ourselves that there are only two things they can control. Their attitude and their effort.

The standings shown here won’t matter past this weekend and that is something that is hard to convey to a 10-year-old.

When a player was getting upset, whether based on their mistakes or another factor, like an aggressive player on the other team, we simply reminded them of the tools they are equipped with and that all they can change is their attitude and effort on the matter. We would point out these skills they had forgotten they had in the moment. This wasn’t always easy, and we weren’t always perfect at doing it by any means. At one point in the season, we had a therapy session during practice and went through each player to tell them how we have seen them grow this year and what they should be proud of. This was just as much for their self-confidence as it was for our own.

As the assistant coach of the team, I really try to run support for the head coach and make sure our subs are ready. If a player during the game has a question or issue, I try to handle it. During practices, I would act as a defender, or just support whatever the coach was trying to teach. I distributed a lot of band-aids and several instant ice packs. I also tried to always encourage them on the wins that I saw while they were on the court. The fact of the matter was, I was there as support for the entire team and I would always try to look forward to seeing what was going to be needed and anticipating what I would need to do, whether it was a parent volunteer for a scorekeeper, a concussion check for the girl that just got hip-checked to the floor, or a high five for the girl that just made her first shot of the game, or the one that missed hers. No matter what, I tried to be prepared and anticipate what was coming. Sometimes this worked, other times it didn’t. How does this connect to EXAIR?

Early one morning, I got to use a ride-on floor scrubber to try and mop the gym. The sun coming in, and the peaceful situation really made me appreciate my situation.

Well, I do the same thing in my role as an Application Engineer. When someone contacts us with a blowoff need or a static electricity issue in their process, I immediately go to work trying to connect the dots in my wild mind to what they need and how fast can we get this obstacle conquered together. If a customer has a product that isn’t quite working right, I start the process of what could have gone wrong, and I try to be methodical in my process of troubleshooting. This all comes from experience and I have been doing this for 15 years now. I never thought I would be an assistant basketball coach since the last time I played was in 6th grade. Well, I also never thought I would be a Certified Compressed Air System Specialist, yet here I am, because there was a need and I filled the need that was presented to me, just like the girls on this basketball team did.

By no means do I get every single product selection, or assistant coaching task right. By no means am I perfect, and I don’t claim to be. I do, however, try to make sure my attitude is focused on achieving the task at hand, whether it be helping a player set a good pick or a customer select the right vacuum, then I make sure I exert the effort needed to get the answers and solutions that both sides need.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS
National Business Development Manager

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Erratic Performance And Simple Solutions

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

If that’s not a vague title that would get you to click on the blog, then I’m not sure what is. The image definitely adds some context to what this may be about. Nearly one year ago I wrote a blog about tailored cooling solutions and industrial controls. It’s a fairly simple process that doesn’t require a lot of time and often results in some improved performance for electrical enclosures running cooler. Well, one of the keys to understanding how to do this is the basics of air movement and always starting at the top.

The 2017 Honda Pioneer 1000. Sitting nose in to the closest light we had before, we replaced batteries so we could easily see where to hook up the jumper pack.

This past weekend I took two of my daughters and one of their friends to some other friend’s property near Lake Cumberland, Kentucky. If you have a property like this with equipment like side by side or boat that isn’t used frequently, then you understand how easy it is for equipment to start acting up for no apparent reason. Even if you run a machine shop or company with excellent preventative maintenance, you know that sometimes, stuff happens and machines go offline. This past weekend, we had three of three machines go offline at the property. After some troubleshooting and repairs, we had 3 for three back up and running. The fun part for me is always the troubleshooting and discovery.

The first was the boat. I didn’t get any repair photos. It is a 150 HP out-drive motor that had fuel issues. We traced it to a fueling problem and after fresh fuel, fuel filter, new spark plug, swapping coils between locations, and swapping fuel injectors, we determined there must’ve been a clog in the fuel rail as it cleared up and ran great. That’s when the rain hit. So then we went on to the side by side. This beautiful machine right here was going into limp mode anytime you reached wide open throttle. One of two batteries was fairly weak and required jump-starting, so we started there, then it still did it. When working on the batteries, we did find a nice little mouse nest in the air pre-cleaner. That box has about a 2″ I.D. tube that runs from the front of the vehicle to just behind the front seats where the motor and air filter/box sit. After the battery didn’t solve the issue, we moved to the next basic issue; air and fuel. It had plenty of fresh fuel, so we started with air. When we removed the air filter, we found an entire 44 gallon trash bag that had essentially been vacuum formed into the air filter. We had two guesses. One was the mice, the other was that someone who previously owned it must’ve sat it in that 2″ tube when they were working on the vehicle to prevent anything from falling down it and over time it worked its way back to fully block the filter. Once that was removed, the machine ran tremendously better with no issues. So a simple lack of air movement took this performance machine to its knees.

The culprit… The 44 gallon bag was formed to the pleats of the air filter. Still in usable condition, needless to say, it went into the permanent trash container far away from the air intake.

That’s a lot like an air-to-air heat Exchanger with a filter that hasn’t been changed in a machine or production area full of floating air debris. I’ve seen spindle drives on CNC machines that had heat dissipation fins where you couldn’t see the fins, just a brick of oily soaked chips. This will cause drive failure in no time, just like the side by side, Lack of appropriate air movement took the machine offline and no fun was had.

If you want to look at a solution with no moving parts and that is extremely reliable, much like the fact we left the hood open, so the mice don’t feel so secure in that pre-filter area, contact an Application Engineer today to let us help you size your Cabinet Cooler System. Even if you want to use these as a fail-safe for your equipment.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS
National Business Development Manager

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Traditions & Opening Day

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

I’m sure wherever you live, the closest city that has a major league baseball team has a big to-do list centered around their opening day. Here in Cincinnati, it is very close to a holiday tradition for locals. We have friends who take off work and still take their teenage kids to the parade and take in all the festivities as part of an annual tradition. We can’t see the parade from our building in the Northeast corner of Cincinnati, and we don’t close because we pride ourselves on delivering shipments on time and when a customer needs, that speaks to the traditions that we honor.

Whenever you call in during business hours of 0700 – 1600 ET, you will be greeted by a real human, not some automated voice attendant that you have to guess which button to push or what to say to get to a real human. On top of that, we have an entire team of Application Engineers who are all trained across all of our product lines and will help to determine the best solutions for you and your team. We also pride ourselves on the ability to ship stock products on the same day for orders received by 2 PM ET. To top that off, we honor a 30-day guarantee on stock products shipped within the US and Canada.

This means if the product you receive doesn’t meet your expectations, our team will help you determine how to get it to exceed the need and if it cannot, then we will also walk you through the return process. This is on top of our 5-year built-to-last warranty on compressed air products ensuring their quality from material and workmanship defects. (1-year warranty for electronic components)

If you want to talk to a real person and start a relationship with a company that is going to help you get to the solutions you need in order to improve your process, contact an Application Engineer today!

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS
National Business Development Manager

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

EXAIR Founder’s Day 2024

Published on by Kirk EdwardsLeave a comment

EXAIR celebrates Founder’s Day each year on February 22nd (or the closest working day) in order to commemorate the birthday of our founder, Roy Sweeney.  He founded the company in 1983 and drove EXAIR to become the strong, successful and innovative company that it has over the years.  Roy led EXAIR for 33 years.  Today would have been his 90th birthday. It’s hard to believe that he’s been gone for almost eight years, but his commitment to helping others lives on through all of us.

We make this day a celebration and a day to mark our ongoing commitment to the service of others, in keeping with the values that Roy and his wife Jackie felt (and feel) very strongly about.  They both worked hard to support many social causes and events here in Cincinnati and set a great example of what being engaged in your community looks like. We continue to look outside our company, outside ourselves and outside our immediate surroundings, to do what we can to improve the world around us.  And we urge others to do the same.

This year, we have selected these organizations to receive donations as part of our Founder’s Day celebration:

DAV
Supporting disabled American veterans and their families.

Freestore Foodbank
Supplies 33 million meals per year to those in need.

Lighthouse Youth and Family Services
Supporting their Safe and Supported program for LGBTQ youth

Cincinnati Works
Partners with all willing and capable people living in poverty to assist them in advancing to economic self-sufficiency through employment.

Wave Pool
Wave Pool is a contemporary art fulfillment center where experimental art connects the community and creates change.

Bethany House
Helps homeless and at-risk families with solutions to achieve housing stability and long-term self-sufficiency.

To further encourage ourselves to participate and engage with our communities, EXAIR has also established an Employee Volunteer Program that enables every full-time employee with at least 90 days of service to volunteer with organizations of their choice during the normal work week with full pay by EXAIR.  We urge everyone to work collectively with organizations in our community to improve the lives of those in need.

As we celebrate Founder’s Day today, we wish Roy a happy birthday.  We miss him.  We remember what he and Jackie did (and do) for all of us and for countless others.  And we pledge to continue his commitment to helping those who need it.

Happy Founder’s Day 2024 from everyone at EXAIR!

Kirk Edwards
President
EXAIR