To Shim or not to Shim… The Super Air Knife is a fabulous piece of equipment. Between the quiet laminar flow of air, and the intense 40 to 1 ratio of entraining the ambient air around it, this Knife is definitely cutting edge (pun intended). As you look at the front edge of the Super Air Knife, or as we call it “the place where the magic happens“, you will see that there is a very small slit or gap where the air flows. The gap in that metal is caused by the shim that is inside the Super Air Knife. We control the size of this gap with shims. Hark, what light through yonder air gap breaks?… Sorry, I get carried away sometimes.
The shims in the Aluminum Super Air Knives are made of a polyester plastic, the PVDF Super Air Knife Shims are made of PTFE, and I will give you two guesses what the Stainless Steel Super Air Knife Shims are made of, you guessed it… Flubber… Just kidding, they are stainless steel of course.
All of our Super Air Knives, regardless of material, ship standard with a 2 thou shim installed. 2 thou you ask? I did too. That is 2 thousandths of an inch, or 0.002″. This is the height of the gap where the Air Flows out. When you are looking at all of our published numbers in the catalogue or on the website, all of those performance numbers are based on this 2 thou shim. Here is the Super Air Knife performance table:
So, what if you need more or less air than what’s on this list? We can adjust the gap. We can add shims up to @ 0.01″ to increase the flow. Or we can go down to 0.001″ (1 thou). This poses the question of, what happens to performance? The good news with the shims is that the Air Consumption is a direct linear proportion to this performance table, and the force is very close to the same. So if you double to a 4 thou shim, you double the air consumption and force. Velocity and sound level will vary, but I do not have data to what degree.
As we size these, generally see people wanting more air, larger gaps (more shims), But conversely, we can decrease the air flow down to a 1 thou shim (1/2 of the published values above). Technically we can go smaller than 1 thou, but there is a limit to where a hole is no longer a hole. Here is a breakdown of our stock shims, with colors and sizes for the Super Air Knives:
The Super Air Knives are in a class of their own. As long as you feed the Super Air Knives enough air (SCFM) you can run them at most any psig to retrieve the desired air flow for you application. As an added means of flexibility, you can change the gap size with shims. I have put in a request to change the name of these to Super Flexible Air Knives, but I’m not holding my breath.
One more thing about Shims. We can customize your shims!! Now I am not talking about putting your logo on them (but money talks!!), but we can customize your length. Let me give you an example. Let’s say that you need 58″ of airflow, no more no less. Our standard length Super Air Knives are 54″ and 60″. We can make you a custom knife, which is a great option, but for 1 or 2, this is probably not very cost-effective. But we can make you a custom shim. We can have the knife only push 58″ of air with a shim blocking the rest. Furthermore, you can decide if you want 58″ centered on the knife, or all 58″ starting from the left, or right side. It is a very cost-effective way to get a custom flow width.
Please let me know of you have any questions, or would like to discuss any of this further.
Thank you for stopping by,
Brian Wages
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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