Tag: static electricity control

NFL is Back! But So is Static……

Published on by Tyler DanielLeave a comment
bengals
View of Paul Brown Stadium

I awoke on Sunday with a bit more pep in my step. It’s been a long and dreary past 7 months (8 or more months for unlucky fans like me), but this day marked another early season NFL Sunday. Wives across the U.S. were collectively rolling their eyes as their husbands perched themselves comfortably on the couch, cold beer in hand, glued to the television screen from dawn ‘til dusk. It’s an exciting time for many, especially us Bengals fans, as the season is ripe with hope and cautious optimism. Fantasy leagues are in full swing, and my apologies to any of you who elected to draft Le’Veon Bell with your 1st pick this year….. However, with the arrival of football season, there is  an unwelcome guest that begins to rear its ugly head: static electricity.

As summer ends and moves towards fall and winter, the air becomes much drier. And because moisture in the air can mitigate some static charge, the dry air allows more static to be present. You may be familiar with the unpleasant shock you get from the door knob after walking across a carpeted surface. While this type of shock doesn’t generally cause any sort of problems, in many industrial processes this static electricity can cause a wide range of different issues. These may manifest simply as nuisance shocks to the operator similar to the door knob example, but it can also cause problems with finish quality, materials jamming/tearing, sheet feeding problems, product clinging to itself or rollers, and dust clinging to product.

In many painting applications, particularly in the automotive industry, dust and debris from the ambient environment can settle on the part prior to painting. Just blowing them off with a standard air gun won’t remove all of the particles if they’re statically charged. The static must be removed in order to remove it or it’ll cause imperfections in the finish after painting. This often results in a high amount of rejected parts that must be scrapped out. I recently visited with a company who handles the painting of small interior automotive parts. The parts are housed on shelves in a dusty environment. This dust settles on the parts while they’re waiting to be painted and just using an air gun alone wasn’t taking care of the problem. In this setup, they were rejecting nearly 60% of all painted parts after inspection.

IMG_3902
Automotive parts after painting

We brought with us a Model 8193 Gen4 Ion Air Gun to replace their regular compressed air gun. The Ion Air Gun is an ergonomic handheld gun that combines low air consumption along with an incredibly fast static decay rate. After taking a reading both before and after with a Model 7905 Static Meter, it was clear that the Ion Air Gun was the right tool for the job. The static eliminating ions were carried to the surface of the part which not only removed the static charge, but also the dust particles clinging to the surface. By replacing their two standard guns with Ion Air Guns, the reject rate was reduced to just under 10% after painting!!

GEN4-iag_500xsq
Model 8193 Gen4 Ion Air Gun

Break out your favorite football team’s gear and enjoy the cooler weather and activities that accompany the coming of Fall, but don’t let static wreak havoc in your processes. EXAIR has a wide range of solutions available that are designed to solve these problems. Give an Application Engineer a call and we’ll be happy to help recommend the best solution. And to all of my fellow Bengals fans out there, WHO DEY!

Tyler Daniel
Application Engineer
E-mail: TylerDaniel@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_TD

 

Bengals photo courtesy of  Nunya Biz via Flickr Creative Commons License

Eliminating Static On An Automatic Stretch Film Machine

Published on by Tyler DanielLeave a comment

Another recent application I’ve worked with from our Peruvian Distributor involved mitigating static on the outside of plastic shrink wrap. The customer manufactures a variety of different containers which after produced are then palletized for shipment to the end-users. They must ensure that the containers are adequately wrapped so that any dust/debris from the environment doesn’t come into contact with them and pose a contamination issue. This static charge would also at times cause the roll to jam up in the machine, and if left unnoticed for any length of time created quite a mess to untangle and fix. In addition, that static build-up that was occurring also manifested into painful shocks to the operators.

IMG_20180809_115558
Automatic Packaging Machine

To wrap them, they’re using an automatic plastic wrapping machine. They wanted some type of a solution that could be permanently affixed to the machine and eliminate the static on the film as it was unrolled. As two non-conductive layers of material are separated (in this case two layers of plastic wrap), a strong static charge is produced. Mounting an Ion Bar on the outside of the stretch film provided an excellent solution for them as they didn’t have to have an operator standing by keeping an eye on it. They weren’t concerned about static on the underside of the material as much as this also allowed for the plastic to adhere better to itself as its wrapped around the pallet. Typically, we’d recommend an Ion Bar or other Static Eliminator on either side of the material, but in this case the static charge there was wanted.

g4longibapp
Gen4 Ion Bars without compressed air requirement

Since we were able to mount the bar within 2” (50mm), it didn’t require a supply of compressed air to carry the ions to the surface of the plastic. As an extra layer of precaution, they also purchased an Ion Air Gun that was used to treat the outsides of the pallets again as they’re removed from the machine. Doing so has now prevented them from having to inspect and re-wrap pallets as needed. Since some runs may span over several days, there were times that they had to re-wrap products more than once as the dust build up was not acceptable to their customer. They estimated that 40-50% of the pallets had to be re-wrapped at least once, taking anywhere from 5-10 mins each after accounting for removing the old wrap, placing it back into the machine and re-wrapping.

With a wide variety of Static Eliminators available from stock, both with and without a compressed air requirement, EXAIR has a solution for your static problems. As we move into the cooler and dryer months of the year (If this hot summer ever ends), static becomes much more of an issue. Don’t wait until it becomes a serious problem and get in touch with an Application Engineer today!

Tyler Daniel
Application Engineer
E-mail: TylerDaniel@exir.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_TD

Static, Dirt, and Plastic Tubes

Published on by John BallLeave a comment
Plastic Tube Blow-off, old method.

A facility was manufacturing plastic laminated tubes used for packaging that was roughly 1” (25mm) in diameter by 6” (152mm) long.   At the end of the process before bulk packaging their tubes for customers, they would have to blow out the tubes to remove any dirt and debris.  (Reference photo above).  They were having issues with cleaning the tubes completely.

In their process, an operator would stack the plastic tubes into a form that held roughly 750 tubes.  Once filled, the operator would use a 6mm plastic tube on the end of an air hose to blow compressed air into each tube.   They noticed that some remnants still remained inside the tubes.  They tried increasing the air pressure, but they still had rejects for debris.  They contacted EXAIR to see if we could help.

When you speak about plastic components, static can be a real nuisance.  Static can be generated by sliding, stacking, rubbing parts together.  Once static starts to build, dust and debris like to stick to the surface; and depending on the strength of the static voltage, the force can be very strong.  Even by blowing compressed air to clean, the debris can still cling to edges or even “jump” to another location.  If the static can be removed, the particles will no longer be able to “stick” to the surface from static charges.

EXAIR offers a variety of Gen4 Static Eliminators that are compressed air assisted.  For this application, I recommended the model 8493 Gen4 Ion Air Gun Kit.   It combines a static-removal ionizer with an ergonomically-designed compressed air gun.  The kit also includes a power supply, filter and regulator.  The power supply is able to create both positive and negative ions inside the Ion Air Gun.  This can eliminate any type of static.  The efficient design of the Ion Air Gun allows for a 5:1 amplification ratio; minimizing compressed air usage while maximizing ionized airflow.  Together, the ionized airflow eliminates the static from the plastic surfaces, and the air stream will remove the dirt and debris.  With a regulator, you can control the force from a “breeze” to a “blast”, and with the filter, you can keep the supply of compressed air clean.  They replaced their 6mm blow-off device with the EXAIR Gen4 Ion Air Gun, and their process improved immensely.  While being able to remove the dirt and debris from the tubes more efficiently, the Gen4 Ion Air Gun was able to use less compressed air by 50% (saving money), lower the noise level by 10 dBA (no PPE required), and reduce the cycle time from 20 minutes to 7 minutes.

EXAIR has a variety of Gen4 Static Eliminators that can save you from getting headaches, losing money, and saving time.  If you use plastic component in your application, static will be a potential issue.  If you would like to eliminate it, please contact an Application Engineer at EXAIR.

John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

Standard Ion Air Knife Keeps Viewing Cover Clean

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

A manufacturer of high speed industrial machinery makes a sorting machine for seeds.  There’s a clear plastic cover for operators to see the seeds as they pass through the machine.  Many seeds are dense enough to move right on through, but some lower density seeds (canola, lettuce, and flax seed, specifically) bounce around a bit, and even the slight static charge that builds up as they move through causes them to cling to the inside of that viewing window.

This was a great fit for our Model 8406 6″ Gen4 Standard Ion Air Knife Kit…”fit” being the operative word.  While the Super Ion Air Knives are more efficient and quieter, there simply wasn’t very much room at all for mounting inside, so the smaller profile of the Standard Ion Air Knife made all the difference in the world.  Also, since they just need static dissipation of such a small area, and not much flow at all is required to blow off these lightweight seeds, the differences in compressed air consumption and sound level were not very much at all.

Profile-wise, a Gen4 Standard Ion Air Knife takes up less than half the space of a Gen4 Super Ion Air Knife.

For performance, efficiency, and dependability, look no further than EXAIR’s Gen4 Static Eliminator Products.  If you have a problem with static, we’ve got a solution.  Give me a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
Visit us on the Web
Follow me on Twitter
Like us on Facebook