Tag: solution

You Don’t Need to Spend Thousands to Optimize Your Compressed Air System

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

There is no denying it, saving compressed air is a process.  This process often involves some type of energy audit or at the very least an evaluation of something going wrong with production and a way to improve it.  Many programs, consultants, and sales reps will devise a solution for the problem.

Often times the solution is to create a more efficient supply side of the compressed air system. The supply side is essentially everything within the compressor room or located in close proximity to the actual air compressor. While optimizing the supply side can amount to savings, many of these solutions and services can involve great expense, or capital expenditure processes.  These processes can often lead to delays and continued waste until the solution is in place.  What if there was a way to lower compressed air usage, save energy, solve some demand issues on the compressed air system and save some money while the capital expenditure process goes through for the larger scale project.

These solutions are a simple call, chat, email or even fax away. Our Application Engineers are fully equipped to help determine what points of your compressed air demand side can be optimized. The process generally starts with our Six Steps To Compressed Air Optimization.

6 Steps from Catalog

Once the points of use are evaluated the Application Engineer can give an engineered solution to provide some relief to the strain on your compressed air supply side.  For instance, an open copper pipe blow off that is commonly seen within production environments can easily be replaced with a Super Air Nozzle on the end of a Stay Set Hose that will still bend and hold position like the copper pipe does while also saving compressed air, reducing noise level, and putting some capacity back into the supply side of the compressed air system.

engineered nozzle blow offs
Engineered solutions (like EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Products) are the efficient, quiet, and safe choice.

One of the key parts to the solutions that we offer here at EXAIR is they all ship same day on orders received by 3 PM ET that are shipping within the USA. To top that off the cost is generally hundreds, rather than thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars. Well under any level of a capital expenditure and can generally come in as a maintenance purchase or purchased quickly through the supply cribs.  Then, to take this one step further, when the EXAIR solution shows up within days and gets installed EXAIR offers for you to send in the blow off that was replaced and receive a free report on what level of compressed air savings and performance increases you will be seeing and provide a simple ROI for that blow off (though we would also encourage a comparison before a purchase just so you have additional peace of mind).

This amounts to saving compressed air and understanding how much air is being saved, adding capacity back into your supply side which will reduce strain on the air compressor, give the ability to increase production while the capital expenditure for the end solution of controls and higher efficiency on the supply side is approved to then save even more compressed air and energy.

The point is this, savings and efficiency doesn’t have to involve a capital expenditure, if that is the end game for your project that is great! Let EXAIR provide you a solution that you can have in house by the next business day to save money NOW and then put that savings towards another project. No matter the method, it all starts with a call, chat, email or fax.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

 

Friction Loss – Pressure Drops – Fitting Restrictions – Why Compressed Air Plumbing Matters

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

Over the weekend I was working on a car in my driveway and I needed a large volume of air at the far end of the car to try and unplug a clogged sunroof drain line.  Rather than trying to move the car while it was mostly taken apart, I just hooked up another air line extension and started to go to the drain.   Even knowing what I know as an EXAIR Application Engineer about lengths of tubing, air restriction, and fitting restrictions, I went ahead with the quick and easy “fix”.

An example of pressure drop from a compressed air quick disconnect.

I grabbed another 30′ – 3/8″ i.d. air line with 1/4″ quick disconnects (see why this is wrong with this blog) on both end, rather than getting out the 50′ long 1/2″ i.d. air line that I have with proper fittings that then reduce down to a 1/4″NPT at the end to tie into most of my air tools. By doing so I ended up hooking up a Safety Air Gun which then gave a very light puff of air into the tube and the clog in the line went nowhere.  As a matter of fact, it was almost like it laughed because the tubing vibrated as if the clog said, “Pfft I am going nowhere.”

I then, stepped back and evaluated what I had done in a rush to try and get a job done rather than taking the extra five minutes to get the proper air line to do the job.   I then spent 10 minutes putting that hose up and getting out the correct hose.  Then, with a whoosh and a thud the clog was launched into my yard from the clogged drain port and I finished the repairs.

If only I had watched Russ Bowman’s spectacular video on Proper Compressed Air Supply Plumbing the day before. Rather than wasting time with the quick “fix” that cost me more time and didn’t fix anything I should have taken a little more time up front to verify I had properly sized my lines for the job at hand.

If you would like to discuss compressed air plumbing, appropriate line sizes, or insufficient flow on your compressed air system, please contact an EXAIR Application Engineer.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

What’s In A Name?

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

Well, a lot, actually…if that name is EXAIR. I wrote a blog just last week about how a set of Super Air Knives solved a MAJOR problem with a brand new aluminum sawing application – the company got those Super Air Knives on the recommendation of the Maintenance Supervisor, who had used them, with great success, at a previous company.

Even more recently, I had the pleasure of helping a caller from an engineering firm that specifies a wide range of our products for use in their OEM machinery:

*Air Knives & Nozzles for automated blow offs.
*Cabinet Cooler Systems for electrical/electronics heat protection.
*E-Vac Vacuum Generators for end-of-arm robotics “pick & place.”

Turns out, they use a good amount of compressed air in their manufacturing facility and (did I mention they’re an engineering firm?) they’re interested in implementing a facilities resource management program. For one part of this, they want to know how much compressed air they’re using, when they’re using it, and what they’re using it for. And when presented with a question about compressed air, they thought about EXAIR…and wanted to know more about the Digital Flowmeter.

EXAIR's Digital Flowmeter w/ USB Data Logger
EXAIR’s Digital Flowmeter w/ USB Data Logger

We discussed everything from theory of operation, to best practices for installation (location, position, etc.,) to accuracy, to getting the flow data…and we’ve got a few options for that:

*The Digital Flowmeter itself can output a 4-20mA signal, or there’s an optional RS-485 output board available.
*The USB Data Logger connects directly to the Digital Flowmeter and records flow rate data – about 9 hours’ worth if measured once a second; 2 years’ worth if measured every 12 hours. When removed from the Digital Flowmeter and plugged into your computer, you can use its software, or Microsoft Excel, to view & analyze the data.
*The Summing Remote Display offers instant indication of current flow rate, previous 24 hours’ air consumption, and cumulative total usage, all at the push of a button.

EXAIR's Remote Summing Display - see current flow rate, previous 24 hours' consumption, or total cumulative usage, at the push of a button!
EXAIR’s Summing Remote Display – see current flow rate, previous 24 hours’ consumption, or total cumulative usage, at the push of a button!

The latter turned out to be the best fit for my caller – the main supply header runs right past his office, and, if he can sell his facilities folks on it, he can install the Summing Remote Display on the wall, right next to his desk.  Easy as that.

EXAIR’s Intelligent Compressed Air Products have made a name for themselves in many places like this. Here at the factory, we’re all dedicated to spreading, and reinforcing, that reputation for excellence. If you’d like to find out more, give me a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
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EXAIR Ionization Bar Eliminates Static in Printer

Published on by johnball2014Leave a comment

One of the big issues in winter many manufacturing and process industries experience is static.  An outside sales rep who was responsible for selling and servicing industrial laser printers contacted us after he started to receive more complaints about the quality of the print, especially with customers that used polyester sheets.  One of their customers was printing both sides of a 13” X 19” (33 X 48 cm) sheet, and they noticed that the print on the back side was blurry.  We discussed how static can cause issues like this in printing applications. A static charge can keep ink from landing in the proper location, it can cause ink to spiderweb, spread over defined boundaries or fail to penetrate its target.

Ionizing Bar
Low cost Ionizing Bars eliminate static cling.

Being that EXAIR Corporation is a leader in production and application of active Static Eliminators, we were able to discuss the issues and suggest some possible solutions. Laser printers are designed to use static to pick up toner onto a drum and to apply it to sheets of paper.  If the sheet of paper has a charge on it, that can affect the print quality because like charges repel each other.  In this application, we have two conditions that contributed to the increase in static charge on the polyester sheet, the dry air and the type of material.  Dry air in winter is pretty much a given as cold air cannot hold as much moisture as hot air can.  With a decrease in moisture levels, static fields can build to much higher levels causing discharges, the small “shocks” you experience when you touch a non-conductive material, another person or even a grounded machine.  The other static issue is material.  The type of materials involved in an application determine how they will share electrons when they rub together.  Some materials give up electrons readily and some materials tend to gain electrons.

Getting back to the application; inside the mentioned printer, a rubber roll was used to invert the paper to print on the back side.  If the paper was cellulose, it is harder to generate static as the rubber roll and cellulose are similar in sharing electrons. However, this sheet was made of polyester, it has a higher affinity to take electrons from the rubber roll. A static field would build which was enough to affect the transfer of toner from the drum causing a blurred image.

Our strategy for applying static elimination solutions is to determine the point of static generation and locate the static elimination equipment just downstream of the problem area.  In this instance, it was after the roller just before printing. The space was limited, so the customer went with model 7012 Ionizing bar with the 7901 power supply.  The positive and negative ions that are emitted from the Ionizing Bar will neutralize static fields of positive or negative polarity bringing the surface of the polyester material back to neutral.  The length of the bar was slightly shorter than the width of the sheet, however it still has plenty of capacity to neutralize the outside edges.  The end user mounted the Ionizing Bar in the center of the sheet about 0.5” (13mm) away from the surface.  After he plugged in the Ionization Bar, the static field was removed and the printing on the back side was now clear.  The end user was so impressed that he contacted the manufacturer of the laser printer to suggest they add effective static elimination as  an option for troublesome applications like his.

If you have static issues and you want to remove the pain they cause in the form of injury, lost production time and material waste, contact EXAIR and speak to one of our experienced Application Engineers.

John Ball, Application Engineer
E-mail: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb