Tag: stayset

Enhance Your EXAIR Product & More w/ Accessories

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

If you hang around with me for long enough, you will grow to understand that I love comedy movies. One of my favorite production groups is Broken Lizard. You might know some of their work and, just to be clear, I have seen all the movies, watched two of the guys’ TV shows, and listened to some of their podcasts. When trying to come up with a title for today’s blog, I looked up synonyms for “Accessorize”. The picture below shows the results.

If you haven’t seen Super Troopers, then I am not sure if we can continue to be friends. Actually, I won’t hold it against you. There is a scene in the movie where they are trying to get some information from a photo and so Ramathorn is sitting at a computer and working on the photo. He continually types and says, “Enhance” several times until the chief briskly informs him to just print the photo already. Unfortunately, I can’t share the clip here because there may be some inappropriate language at the end of the clip, so just believe my poor description that it is funny.

Well, all the products EXAIR offers in our Accessories catalog section will ENHANCE your point-of-use compressed air application. Whether it be a point-of-use filter/ oil removal filter, and a regulator with mounting brackets and coupling kits to ensure you have clean air being utilized. See the video below for just how well they work and why they are important to an installation.

Items like Swivel Fittings, Stay Set Hoses, and even lengths of Air Hose can give versatility in locations where hard piping and getting precise alignment of the air stream are needed. This can save the installer of a blowoff many fittings and hours of time on installation. The Swivel Fittings give a lock-in-place adjustment capable of 25° from centerline at 360° of rotation.

The Stay Set Hoses are another tool-free adjustable mounting option for point of use compressed air products. The ability to get rid of copper tubing, which is costly and can kink if proper tools aren’t used to bend it, is great for easy installation in the field. To see how easily they can be used, check out the video by John Ball below.

Even after these products we still offer a number of accessories that will aid operators in their production environment. If you want to discuss any part of the EXAIR product offering, please contact an Application Engineer today.

Brian Farno, MBA – CCASS Application Engineer

BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Efficiency Lab Leads To Big Savings

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

EXAIR Corporation manufactures quiet, safe, and efficient compressed air products for industry. We want our customers to get the most out of our products, and, in turn, their compressed air systems. To do that, we offer a unique service called the EXAIR Efficiency Lab. Here’s how it works:

  • An Application Engineer can arrange to have your existing compressed air device(s) sent in to our facility.
  • We’ll use our calibrated test equipment to measure the compressed air consumption, sound level, and force applied of those devices.
  • You’ll receive a detailed test report, along with our recommendations to implement an efficient, quiet, and safety compliant solution.
  • We’ll even send your tested device(s) back to you, at no charge, if you wish.

I recently had the pleasure of conducting just such a test on some air guns.  The caller was the Environmental Health & Safety Director for a plastics manufacturer.  The main concern was safety compliance…a recent audit had shown that some workstations were using handheld blowoff devices that did not comply with OSHA standard 1910.242(b), which limits dead end pressure of compressed air products used for cleaning to 30psi.

After discussing their typical uses for these (and other) air guns, they sent in a couple for testing.  Here’s what we found out:

“Thumb guns” are especially popular for blowoff because of their compact size, ergonomic design. and low price.

The air gun with the 7″ straight extension (top) is a “textbook” example of non-compliance with OSHA standard 1910.242(b).  Because it has an open-end discharge with no relief path, this one could cause an air embolism if it were inadvertently dead-ended into the operator’s skin – a potentially fatal condition.  It also uses a considerable amount of compressed air, and is quite loud.  At 80psig supply pressure:

  • Compressed air consumption is 40.7 SCFM
  • Noise level is 95.5dBA
  • Force applied, at a distance of 12″, is 13oz

For comparison’s sake, EXAIR Model 1210-6 Soft Grip Safety Air Gun is fitted with our Super Air Nozzle, on the end of a 6″ rigid extension:

  • Compressed air consumption is 14 SCFM
  • Sound level is 74dBA
  • Force applied, at a distance of 12″, is 13oz…same as theirs.
Model 1210 Soft Grip Safety Air is fitted with an EXAIR Super Air Nozzle. We can also supply it with a Rigid Extension and Chip Shield (right).

The other one is OSHA compliant (it can’t be dead-ended…the cross-drilled hole provides a relief path, but it was still pretty inefficient and loud.  At our standard test pressure of 80psig:

  • Compressed air consumption is 30.8 SCFM
  • Noise level is 94.8dBA
  • Force applied, at a distance of 12″, is 16.9oz

Although the force generated by the Model 1210 Soft Grip Safety Air Gun isn’t quite as high as theirs, it’s still our recommendation here.  Oftentimes, the flow and velocity generated by the engineered Super Air Nozzle is more than capable of meeting the needs of the typical blow off applications these types of air guns are used in.

EXAIR Efficiency Lab testing proves that replacing these air guns with our Soft Grip Safety Air Guns (or at least replacing the tips with EXAIR Super Air Nozzles…we also have adapters for that) will result in compressed air savings of 66% and 55%, respectively, and lower sound levels to within OSHA standard 1910.95(a) limits:

All EXAIR Soft Grip Safety Air Guns comply with these limits for 8 hour exposure.

If you’d like to know more about the efficiency & safety (or lack thereof) of your current air blow off devices, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

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