This time of year, it is not uncommon to feel a slight shock after walking across a carpeted surface and touching a door knob. This little “jolt” is a result of fast-moving electrons leaping from your body to the door knob, or vice versa. As your feet shuffle across the surface of a rug or carpet, your body will either gain or lose electrons. Touching a conductive surface then causes these electrons to leap from one place to another.
If you notice, this happens to occur much more often during colder winter months. The reason that you experience static shocks more frequently during winter is due to the relative humidity. At colder temperatures, air does not hold as much moisture as it does when it’s warm. Even though you’re heating your house to a similar temperature, the air that is being drawn into your home and heated is still the dry cold air containing less moisture.
If you’re anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re quickly approaching winter and the increase in issues related to staticelectricity. EXAIR manufactures a complete line of products designed to help you quickly and reliably neutralize any residual charge on the surface of a part or material. Check out the video below for a brief overview of the options EXAIR offers and how to get started!
We’re watching football again on the weekends (and on Monday, and Tuesday, and apparently Friday this year?) which means cooler fall temperatures are quickly approaching.
Static electricity is something that we talk about often here at EXAIR, particularly during the colder winter months. When an atom gains or loses an electron from its outer shell, it becomes electrically imbalanced. A material’s propensity to either gain or lose an electron is “ranked” on a list known as the Triboelectric Series. Static Electricity is generated in a few different ways: contact static build up, detachment static buildup, and frictional static build up.
Detachment static build up occurs when a material is in contact with another and these two surfaces separate from one another. During the separation, not all of the electrons are able to get back to their original molecule. This results in an instantaneous static charge as the electrons are transferred from one object to another in accordance with the Triboelectric Series. Due to the large surface area in most detachment static buildup scenarios, the amount of static generated is typically far greater than contact static buildup.
One of the most common types of detachment static buildup occurs as material separates from a roll. This typically occurs at a high rate of speed and the large surface area across the width of the roll presents an ideal situation for static buildup. This charge can cause the material to stick to itself and not come off the roll properly, creating issues down the line. This was exactly the case for a recent customer pharmaceutical company, manufacturing medicine used in the pet industry.
In many labeling processes, detachment static can build up to the point where it causes issues with label application. The label may not adhere to the container properly or the labels can stick to rollers or itself and cause operators to shut down the machine to fix. This leads to increased downtime, lost production, and excess waste in the process.
The solution was to install one of EXAIR’sGen4 Ion Air Jets to saturate the labels with static neutralizing positive and negative ions. This quickly eliminates the charge (can neutralize 5kV in as little as 0.3 seconds) and stops the issues they were noticing with production. With much colder temperatures right around the corner, this was a welcome addition as the problem was going to quickly get worse as humidity decreases during winter.
Don’t wait until the problems associated with static return to seek out a solution. Contact an EXAIR Application Engineer for help discussing your process and how we could be of benefit to you.
Compressed air is used in many different industries. Although we speak to customers about a wide variety of applications, often particular industries will have similar applications, and thus similar solutions. To make these solutions readily available, we share this information in several different places. One such location is our Application Database, where we have collected many solutions to common pneumatic problems, and then organized by industry to make them easier to find.
If you have an application in the Automotive Industry, for instance, using our Application Database, you will find many solutions using EXAIR products. For example, our Air Knives have been used in the following applications:
1. Cleaning glass after cutting, using an Air Knife.
2. Reducing cooling time on oven dried bumpers.
As well as documenting solutions in our Application Database, we also highlight solutions in our catalog. In the example below, you can see how our Super Ion Air Knife was used to remove dust before car bodies entered a paint booth.
Ultimately, our products have helped solve many problems, and we want to share as much of this information with you as possible. If you would like to speak with an Application Engineer to discuss how we can help, give us a call!
In this installment of EXAIR’s Starter Guide Series, we’re taking a closer look at another Intelligent Compressed Air® Product. If you’ve purchased, or are considering purchasing a Gen4 Ion Air Cannon, this short video is for you:
