Tag: Super Air Nozzle

What is Sound, and How Can You Reduce It?

Published on by johnball2014Leave a comment

Many manufacturing plants have a strong focus on safety for their workers.  One major safety concern that is commonly overlooked is noise.   Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, has a directive that defines the noise exposure over a time-weighted average; 29CFR 1910.95(a).   For an eight-hour day, the maximum noise level is 90 dBA.  The Center for Disease Control, CDC, reports that “approximately 18% of all manufacturing workers have hearing difficulty”1.

What is sound?  In the simplest of terms, a decibel is one-tenth of a bel.  Historically, bel was a unit created to honor Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone.  Like the frequency waves that travel through telephone wires, pressure waves travel through the air as sound.  This sound pressure is what our ears can detect as loudness.  EXAIR offers a Digital Sound Level Meter, model 9104, that is calibrated and can measure sound in decibels.  It is very important to know the sound level, as it can permanently damage your ears.

Here is a test for you.  If you go and stand in your plant, you can probably hear loud noises coming from your compressed air system.  EXAIR has an engineered product to solve most of them.  On the Hierarchy of Controls for NIOSH, Personal Protection Equipment, PPE, is the least effective.  A better control would be to isolate your operators from the hazard with an engineered product.  EXAIR can offer that solution for many of your blow-offs and pneumatic discharges to reduce noise levels.  This would include; but not be limited to; Super Air Nozzles, Safety Air Guns, Super Air Knives, and Super Air Amplifiers. 

Let’s look at a ¼” open copper tube.  It can create a sound level of over 100 dBA.  They are commonly used because they are readily available and inexpensive to make.  But they waste a lot of compressed air, as well as creating a hazard for your operators.  Just by adding a model 1100 Super Air Nozzle to the end of the copper tube, we can reduce the noise level to 74 dBA at 80 PSIG (5.5 bar).  Wow!  Not only will it remove the hazard, but it will reduce the amount of compressed air usage; saving you money.  Here is a quick video to show the importance of the EXAIR Super Air Nozzles.

At EXAIR, we have a statement, “Safety is everyone’s responsibility.”  EXAIR manufactures engineered products with high quality, safety, and efficiency in mind.  To keep your operators safe, EXAIR offers many different types of blow-off products that are designed to decrease noise to a safe level.  So, here’s to Alexander Graham Bell for creating the telephone, which you can use to contact an Application Engineer at EXAIR.  We will be happy to help to reduce your sound levels. 

John Ball
Application Engineer


Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

Note 1: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/ohl/manufacturing.html

Powerful, Efficient, and OSHA Compliant: EXAIR Super Blast Safety Air Guns

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

Earlier this year, EXAIR introduced the TurboBlast® Safety Air Gun. They offer the same performance as a number of our Super Blast Safety Air Guns, with some noteable features:

  • Nozzle Guard protects the Super Air Nozzle from damage that could be caused by incidental contact during use.
  • Gate Valve option for easy flow adjustment by the operator, with a simple twist of the ring!
  • Rugged AND comfortable elastomer grip with pushbutton trigger for optimal ergonomics.

These, combined with the features they share with our four most powerful Super Blast Safety Air Guns (high force, automatic shutoff, 3 and 6 foot extensions) make it one of the most innovative blow off products on the market today. With all that going for the TurboBlasts, we still want to emphasize that they’re offered as an enhancement to – and not a replacement for – the Super Blast line. Consider:

Super Air Nozzle Clusters. Because of the Nozzle Guard, Clusters aren’t offered with the TurboBlast products. Clusters concentrate their high force, powerful airflow on a smaller target area than comparable single Super Air Nozzles:

*Force measured at 12″ (305mm) from target. Sound level measured at 3ft (914mm). All measurements taken at 80psig (5.5 BAR).

Back Blow Nozzles. Also because of the Nozzle Guard, the Model 1008SS 1 NPT Back Blow Nozzle is offered on the Super Blast, but not the TurboBlast. It’s made for blowing out pipe with inside diameters from 2″ to 16″ (51-406mm):

EXAIR Super Blast Safety Air Guns fitted with our 1 NPT Back Blow Nozzles are available with 1ft (top left), 3ft (top right) or 6ft (bottom) extensions.

Spring-To-Close Ball Valve. While the ergonomic, pilot actuated pushbutton trigger on the TurboBlast Safety Air Guns is likely to be preferred in a number of situations, the full hand grip of the Super Blast Safety Air Gun’s ball valve proves to be more suitable for certain positions, like when the device is to be operated above shoulder height:

The ball valve handle essentially becomes part of the operator’s grip when using this Model 1215-3 Super Blast Safety Air Gun in an overhead space blow off application.

EXAIR is in the business of helping you get the most out of our products – and your compressed air system. If you have questions, I welcome the opportunity to help…give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
EXAIR
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The Trick To Adding Sound Levels Of Multiple Sources

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

If I put a 10 pound weight on a scale, the scale will read 10 pounds. If I put another 10 pound weight next to it, the scale with now read 20 pounds.

If I have $10 bill in my pocket…well, that’s a LOT more cash than I usually carry. But if I somehow come into possession of another $10 bill and put it in my pocket, now I have $20. And it probably won’t be for long.

If there’s an EXAIR Model 1100 Super Air Nozzle supplied with compressed air at 80psig, and my Sound Level Meter is reading a level of 74 dBA, and I hook another one up right next to it, my Sound Level Meter now reads about 78 dBA.

Wait, what? Did we just break math there? You, and your ears, will be happy to know that there’s perfectly valid math behind the third (as well as the first two) statements above. The third one’s just a little different, that’s all.

See, sound power (that’s “how loud” sound is, as measured at the point of generation) and sound pressure (“how loud” it is, as measured at the point where it’s heard) are both quantified in units called decibels. And, unlike mass or wealth (the first two examples above), which are linear & additive, measurement of sound power & pressure is done on a logarithmic scale. That means simple arithmetic won’t work…we have to use a logarithmic equation to ‘add’ those sound levels together. It looks like this:

Combined Sound Level (dBA) = 10 x log10[10SL1/10 + 10SL2/10 + 10SL3/10 …]

Where “SL1”, “SL2”, “SL3”, etc., are the sound levels, in decibels, for the “noisemakers” in question. So, for the two Model 1100 Super Air Nozzles, generating 74 dBA each:

10 x log10[1074/10 + 1074/10] = 77.65 dBA

And just to prove the math works, we made a video of a real live test:

All EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Products are engineered & manufactured to be safe, efficient, and as quiet as possible. If you’d like to find out more, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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Blow Off Systems for the “W”

Published on by bdwagesLeave a comment
Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

Many times we have tendencies to overcomplicate things. I remember a time when I was visiting my sister in Phoenix, and she was making a fancy 3D Scooby-Doo cake for my nephew’s 4th or 5th, and she needed the brown icing. Now when decorating these cakes, the common practice is to make white icing and use food coloring to make all of the other colors you need. She left that morning around 10:00 to look for brown food coloring. Around noon she called to tell us that she could not find brown food coloring at any store on this side of town, and was driving to the far side of the city to look at those stores. I asked her why she couldn’t just use chocolate icing, and she was having no part of it. She was so laser focused on her solution that she couldn’t hear that that chocolate icing is also brown… Fast forward to 6:30 PM, and she comes walking through the door frustrated and exhausted from her day of going store to store all over the large city looking for the elusive brown food coloring. As you can probably guess, she had chocolate icing with her because it finally hit her that the chocolate icing is brown… . The cake turned out amazing, and the lesson was learned.

So, why this story? I feel that in life and in business we sometimes leave our blinders on and become laser focused on one certain way of doing something. We know that the way we se it will work, and think that we know best, and we are going to make it happen exactly how it is playing out in our head. No other way seems possible, and when someone offers up a simpler solution, our immediate thought is “it can’t be that simple”, or “if it’s that simple of a solution, there is no way it could work”. Have you ever said these things? As an application engineer, I take a lot of calls from people that are much smarter than me with grandiose plans. Many times the problem they need to solve, is much simpler than the solution they have in mind. I’ve seen elaborate plans, that probably took hours if not days to develop, come down to simply needing a simple out of the box Blow-Off System.

At EXAIR, we specialize in intelligent compressed air products with a primary focus on blow off, drying, and cooling. When it comes to these things, our product lines (pointedly for this blog, our Air Nozzles and Jets) are head and shoulders above our competition. The vast majority (with the exceptions of the High power or high force nozzles – for obvious reasons) all meet both OSHA standards concerning noise and dead end pressure. Here is a list of all of our Super Air Nozzles showing the SCFM, Force and Decibels:

Our Blow Off Systems (some sample pics below) are a fantastic and smart solution for so many applications. It really doesn’t get much easier than this, a Magnetic base, a Stay-Set Hose, and a Super Air Nozzle, all in one. I feel that these are heavily under utilized. Simply connect your air hose, bend the Stay-Set Hose to the direction of spray that you need, and boom, Bob’s your uncle…

Mag Bases come with one or two outlets. Stay Set Hoses come in lengths from 6″ to 36″.

Sometimes things can be as simple as using chocolate icing for brown icing, or using an EXAIR Blow-Off System in your application. Of course if you need more than that, we will help you find the right solution for you. Call today to speak with an experienced application engineer that is eager to help.

Thank you for stopping by,

Brian Wages

Application Engineer

EXAIR Corporation
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