Tag: static charge

Static Elimination For Cleanrooms: The Intellistat Ion Air Nozzle

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Cleanrooms (sometimes written as two words: “clean rooms”, and historically called “White Rooms” or “Dust-Free Rooms”) are engineered spaces where specialized equipment and procedures are used to maintain a very low concentration of contaminants. While certain levels of cleanliness are desirable for many processes, certain ones can be catastrophically affected by contamination. In the 1960’s, a physicist working for Sandia National Laboratories named Willis Whitfield pioneered the modern cleanroom. His designs focused on continuous filtration of the air inside. This was a real game changer for a number of industries like electronics, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and all kinds of scientific research facilities. They can be small – like a dedicated enclosure in a larger building or shop where one or two people perform benchtop testing, assembly, etc. They can also be enormous, like one of the earliest cleanrooms: a 70,000 square foot space at an RCA facility not far from here, in Cambridge, Ohio, where they made control equipment for some of the earliest intercontinental ballistic missiles in the U.S. military’s arsenal.

It should come as no surprise that equipment used in cleanrooms must comply to some demanding standards & specifications. To that end, ISO (The International Organization for Standardization) created ISO Standard 14644-1. It identifies nine Class Numbers, based on allowable particulate concentrations in a given volume of air. Here’s how it breaks those down:

Basically, the lower the Class Number, the cleaner the air. ISO 1 is often used in semiconductor manufacturing. Medical device manufacturers and pharmaceutical facilities typically specify ISO 5 & 7.

Equipment used inside a cleanroom must be designed, and operated, so as to not increase particulate concentration limits above these limits. You wouldn’t want to use steel tools that are prone to rust, or electric tools with carbon brushes in the motors, for example.

EXAIR’s Intellistat Ion Air Nozzle was designed with these considerations in mind. They were tested by a third part independent laboratory and are classified for use in ISO Class 5 (or below) cleanrooms. This has made them especially popular in pharmaceutical laboratory use, as well as:

  • A local eyeglass & camera lens manufacturer uses them to ensure precision measurement instruments’ readings aren’t affected by any residual static charge caused by the grinding process.
  • A company that makes overlays for medical devices (IV pump controllers, patient monitoring devices…pretty much anything with pushbuttons you might find in a hospital room or a doctor’s office exam room) uses them to maintain compliance with their customers’ standards.
  • A number of food production facilities around the country use them to remove static from processed foods, and packaging containers, during filling operations.
  • A manufacturer of packaging machinery includes them on filling machines servicing the food and pharmaceutical industries.
Order before March 31, 2025 and receive a FREE AC Sensor with any qualifying Static Eliminator purchase.

Whether they’re in a cleanroom or not, the compact design, ease of installation & operation, air use efficiency, and quiet operation make them ideal for a range of static elimination applications. If you’d like to find out more the Intellistat Ion Air Nozzle (or its handheld version, the Intellistat Ion Air Gun), give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Varistat Benchtop Ionizer Solves Static Cling Problem With Tape Backing Strips

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Technicians at an automotive manufacturing plant apply pieces of adhesive tape to parts. They cut the tape to length, remove the plastic backing strip, and stick the tape in place. Due to the static charge on the backing strip, it would stick to their hands when they tried to drop it in the trash can at their work station.

They purchased & installed an EXAIR Model 8600 Varistat Benchtop Ionizer above the trash can. As they peeled the backing strip off the tape, the constant stream of ionized air dissipated the static charge, allowing the strips to simply fall into the receptacle.

Lightweight and compact, the Varistat Benchtop Ionizer isn’t limited to benchtop installations.

Before installing the Varistat Benchtop Ionizer, the strips would also cling to the plastic liner in the trash can. Because the static charge has been removed, the strips don’t cling to the sides anymore, so when the liner bag is full, it’s easy to pull it out, tie it up, and not drop any strips that used to cling to the top of the bag.

The Varistat incorporates EXAIR ionization technology to supply a stream of ion-balancing airflow to remove static charge and blow away the particulate that the static charge was holding on the surface, with hands-free operation and without the need for compressed air. The Varistat is manually adjustable and provides full coverage static elimination for workbenches, parts assembly stations, web cleaning…anywhere that point of use static elimination is needed. It can reduce a 1,000V static charge to just 100V in 0.8 seconds, and is engineered to fit various industrial applications & unique processes with user-friendly features like an adjustable stand, selectable input voltage (120-240VAC), a variable speed fan, replaceable foam intake filters, and adjustable polarity for ionization balance (+/-100V, manually adjustable to <10V).

If you’d like to find out more about the Varistat Benchtop Ionizer – or any of our Static Eliminator Products – give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Static Eliminator Product Configurations

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I recently had the pleasure of discussing an Ion Air Jet application with an engineer at a company that makes medical devices. They needed to remove static charge, and statically clung dust, from certain parts as they’re being packaged and sealed. Because of the specific geometry of the parts, they wanted to use two Model 8194 Gen4 Ion Air Jets, aimed directly at the geometric features of the part where the clinging dust was most problematic. The engineer started the conversation with questions about two Model 8494 Gen4 Ion Air Jet Kits, and was quite pleased when I recommended only one Kit, and an additional Ion Air Jet.

The Model 7960 Gen4 Power Supply that comes with the Kit has two ports, so it can be used to energize any two EXAIR Gen4 Static Eliminators. That’s two Ion Air Jets, two 3″ Super Ion Air Knives, two 108″ Super Ion Air Knives, one Super Ion Air Knife and one Ion Air Gun, etc.

The only exception is our Super Ion Air Wipes, which come in two sizes: 2″ and 4″ (left). Since they have two emitter points and hence, two cables, they’ll use both ports on the 2-Outlet Model 7960 Power Supply (right). If you want to run two of them (or one of them and any two other Static Eliminators), you’ll want the 4-Outlet Model 7961 Power Supply (far right).

Why would you need more than one Static Eliminator? Well, the most popular answer comes from the fact that static charge is a surface phenomenon. You can expose one side of a statically charged film to ionization all day long, and it won’t change the static charge that resides on the other side one bit. Super Ion Air Knives and Ionizing Bars are oftentimes operated in pairs for this very reason.

Two Gen4 Ionizing Bars + one Power Supply = Static elimination on both sides.

It also may be necessary to eliminate static, on the same material, more than once. Remember, all it takes to develop a static charge is contact & separation of non-conductive materials. I worked with a user once who had a machine that die cut shapes from a sheet of open cell foam…similar to the stuff that you wrap fragile items in for moving or transport, but a little thicker. Anyway, this foam sheet came off the roll with enough static charge to make it bunch up instead of moving smoothly into the cutting chamber, so it passed through an “over/under” pair of Ionizing Bars (similar to the photo above). Then, the die cutting caused enough static charge to make the pieces stick to the dies (think “cookie cutters” because that’s EXACTLY what they looked like), so two strategically aimed Ion Air Cannons were used to blow the “cookies” into the collection bin at the outlet of the machine. It was pretty compact (the foam sheet was only 10″ wide, and the “cookies” were “bite sized”) so all four Static Eliminators were energized from one Model 7961 4-Outlet Power Supply.

The “one Super Ion Air Knife and one Ion Air Gun” that I mentioned earlier is another popular answer to that question. The laminar, even flow from a Super Ion Air Knife is ideal for sweeping across a flat surface, but if there are any features to your statically charged material that might be “hidden” from the Super Ion Air Knife’s curtain, another dedicated device can be used for static elimination and blow off from those areas.

EXAIR Gen4 Static Eliminators have 5ft (1.52 meters) cables, except for Ion Air Guns, which have 10ft (3 meters) cables. As long as the cables will reach the Power Supply, you’re in business. If the Static Eliminators will be farther away than that, though, you don’t necessarily have to use separate Power Supplies for them. We can make any Static Eliminator with a custom length cable, up to 50ft (15 meters) in length.

If static charge is causing you problems, we’ve got solutions. To find out more, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Ionizing Points for Static Elimination Without Airflow

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I almost wore three socks this morning: one on each foot, and one inside the sleeve of my shirt. I don’t know if it got in there through the agitation & spin of the washing machine, or the tumbling action in the dryer, but I know how it stayed there through the removal from the dryer, folding, and placing in my shirt drawer: static charge. This was evident from the ‘snap, crackle, and pop’ it made when I pulled it out.

Static charge is all around us. It’s mildly annoying in the clothes we pull from the dryer or the packing peanuts we can’t shake from our hands when unpacking from that new whatever-I-just-ordered from that website. It’s surprisingly uncomfortable when we touch the light switch after walking across a carpeted floor. And it’s terrifying when a lightning bolt hits so close that there’s no discernible delay for the thunder.

It’s also prevalent in many industrial processes: molding, trimming, wrapping (or unwrapping), bag & bottle filling, printing…just to name a few. Some materials are more prone to it than others, but all it takes is contact, and separation, of non-conductive surfaces to generate a static charge. The faster and/or more frequent the contact & separation, the higher the charge, and oftentimes there’s no better way to build up static electricity than sliding or rubbing those surfaces together.

EXAIR has a wide variety of Static Eliminator solutions: Super Ion Air Knives for webs or sheets up to 9 feet in width, Ion Air Cannons or Jets for more focused, conical ionized air blowing, Ion Air Guns for handheld operations, Super Ion Air Wipes for tube, pipe, extruded shapes, etc., and Intellistat Ion Air Guns & Nozzles for laboratory or clean room situations. Two of our Static Eliminator Products – Ionizing Bars & Ionizing Points – require no compressed air at all for operation, and one of those is the point (‘pun intended’ or ‘spoiler alert’ – you decide) of today’s blog.

The EXAIR Gen4 Ionizing Point is compact, versatile, and easy to install. It’s perfect for applications where even a light breeze worth of air flow would be disruptive or problematic. It’s also great for ionizing an existing air flow, like in a blower duct or air conveyance line. If limited space is a problem, it’s got the smallest footprint of just about any static eliminator on the market.

The EXAIR Model 8199 Gen4 Ionizing Point packs a LOT of static elimination in a small package.

They have impressive static dissipation performance as well, as seen in the table below. The only maintenance that’s required is a periodic cleaning of the emitter point (with the Power Supply OFF, using a soft bristled, dry brush). Should the emitter point become fouled, it can also be easily replaced.

If you’ve got problems with static charge, EXAIR has a comprehensive offering of solutions…give me a call to find out more.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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