Tag: theme park

Full Flow Air Knife Creates “Smoke Screen” In Haunted House Attraction

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

EXAIR Corporation’s engineered Air Knife products have a number of uses in industry. The laminar, even flow is conducive to generating a stripping/sweeping action that is particularly effective for blowing off, cooling, cleaning, drying, etc. The way that they entrain enormous amounts of air from the surrounding environment makes them incredibly efficient. This entrainment also makes them very quiet, as it forms a boundary layer that attenuates the sound level of the high velocity flow of the compressed air exiting the Air Knife. These two features have a distinct benefit in a rather unique application in a decidedly non-industrial setting, though.

A company that services amusement parks & carnivals was making a “haunted house” type attraction. At one point, the victims visitors are to be surprised by animated figures “floating” in the air. Their idea was to project the animation on a wall/screen of smoke…spooky, right? They tried discharging the smoke through a series of holes, and even a thin slot, but could not get the effect they wanted, so they called EXAIR to talk about Air Knives.

Smoke escaping small holes or a thin slot doesn’t have much velocity, so it didn’t make a great ‘curtain’ for projection. It’s also turbulent in nature, so it tends to billow & plume (like the top graphic). Engineered compressed air products like EXAIR’s Air Knives generate a laminar flow (like the bottom graphic) whose velocity can be precisely controlled by regulating the air supply pressure.

They found their solution for this application in a Model 2836SS 36″ Stainless Steel Full Flow Air Knife Kit. The Full Flow Air Knife is the most compact design for any given length, and with rear ports for the compressed air supply, it was easy to conceal from the visitors’ sight. When smoke is introduced from behind, it gets pulled in (entrained), and discharges in a laminar, even curtain that the animated figures magically appear on. The extraordinarily low sound level contributes to the magic, as it can’t be heard over the din of eerie sound effects & music that are synonymous with the haunted house experience.

Compressed air flows through the inlet (1) to the Full Flow (left) or Standard (right) Air Knife, into the internal plenum. It then discharges through a thin gap (2), adhering to the Coanda profile (3) which directs it down the face of the Air Knife. The precision engineered & finished surfaces optimize entrainment of air (4) from the surrounding environment.

EXAIR Corporation has been in the business of providing quiet, safe, and efficient compressed air products for all kinds of applications for almost 39 years now. If you want to find out more about introducing more quietness, safety, efficiency…or magic…into your operation, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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ROI – Worth Looking at the Details

Published on by exaircorpLeave a comment

ROI or Return On Investment is a way to gauge the productivity or profit/loss from money spent on an investment. In business, companies will use this information to determine if a project or investment is worth the risk, ultimately leading to a net profit gain as the end result.

Don’t waste your money

In my own personal experience, my wife and I were considering buying into a timeshare vacation property a few years ago. To enter into the agreement, the company required a $ 22,000 “buy-in” (financed of course) and a recurring cost of approximately $60/month for the next 22 years. This would have afforded us 124 “points” for nightly stays on our planned vacation. Their timeshare rentals are tiered into different room types – Studio, 1 bedroom, 2 bedroom or a 3 bedroom villas – with each room type costing a certain amount of points. For us to maximize the length of our stay, we would have to select the studio room which would have given 6 nights at a total of the 124 points.

We have visited this popular vacation destination several times so we know what the average cost is to spend a week on property and purchase theme park tickets for our stay. When we booked on our own, we spent on average a little less than $ 3,000 for 7 days which included our room each night and 6 day park passes per person.

The timeshare rental cost was just for the nightly stay, it didn’t include any park tickets, food or other recreations. On average, the cost for 6 days worth of park passes per adult is close to $ 450.00 and per child it was around $ 400.00. Considering there are 2 adults and 1 child (at the time) we had to pay an additional cost of $ 1,300.00.

So if we joined the timeshare and stayed for 1 week once a year, it was going to cost us approximately $ 3,020.00 ($ 1,720.00 (timeshare cost) + $ 1,300.00 in tickets). In this case, it was actually going to cost us MORE in the long run than if we booked a yearly vacation on our own (< $3,000), leading to a negative ROI. (not to mention, I really didn’t want to commit to the same vacation for the next 22 years!).

When discussing replacement compressed air blowoff solutions with a customer, many times they look at the purchase price of the device and question if it’s worth it for them to make a change. If you follow along with our blog, you will notice that over the last few months we have submitted several different entries relating to this topic, like replacing drilled pipe with our 12″ Super Air Knife resulting in a 47 day ROI or where a customer replaced 4 open copper tubes with our 1110SS Nano Super Air Nozzle and recurring their expenses in just 38 days. In these instances, we show the calculations in regards to the true cost of ownership and how quickly you can recover capital funds when considering the whole scope of the project.

At EXAIR, we are committed to providing Intelligent Compressed Air® Products that reduce compressed air consumption leading to a more efficient process, as well as increasing operator safety. If you are considering an EXAIR solution for your current process but have questions about price or performance, contact one of our application engineers for assistance.

Justin Nicholl
Application Engineer
justinnicholl@exair.com
@EXAIR_JN

 

Little things add up image courtesy of Nic McPhee via creative commons license

Compressed Air – Diagnose a Car Problem or Simulate Ape Breath

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

At the end of this week and all through next week, I will be taking my family to the “most magical place on earth!”  Keep in mind, I have three daughters at the ages of 5 (almost 6 if you ask her), 3, and 1. (Not to mention my wife who has spent endless hours researching and scheduling our events for the week.) It’s not just my household that is going on this trip though, it is my entire family, parents, siblings, teenage nieces, and one nephew.   I honestly don’t remember the last family vacation we went on with all of us there so it is going to be an amazing experience no matter what.

Cin-Orl
Cincinnati to Orlando = 13 hours (not with kids)

The trip from Cincinnati, OH to Orlando, FL is approximately 13 hours, factor in the children and parents ages and I am going to go ahead and say we are looking at 24 hours of travel, at least.   Now I am being smart, we are breaking this trip up into two days. I envision something that will look like a military convoy going down I-75 when the 3 vehicles all get going, the painful truth is it will look more like the Clampets move to Hollywood.

In preparation for the trip I have been doing some routine maintenance on our family van and discovered what I believed to be a rather bad coolant leak.  Now, I didn’t see the leak but I noticed the lack of coolant in the system.   So I started to conduct a few tests and oddly enough, they involved compressed air.   First I filled the system and pulled a vacuum on the entire cooling system to draw out any air.   Once I pulled around 11″ of mercury, I went ahead and turned off my compressed air vacuum generator and tried to see if it would lose vacuum.  It didn’t, so I then hooked a hose to a container of coolant and slowly released the vacuum sucking the coolant down into the system and eliminating the risk of air bubbles.

Since I couldn’t see a loss in vacuum I decided I would test the system under pressure.  To do this I simply removed the radiator cap and attached a special tool which would pump air down into the radiator and put the entire system under pressure, much like it would be during normal operation.  Once I built the pressure up to 15 psig, the factory cap was rated for 16 psig,  I let it sit.  I scoured every single coolant line I could find and came up dry.  Couldn’t find a single drop of coolant escaping the system at all and it even held pressure for a solid hour. Coming up with no leak I decided to give it a test drive and low and behold, I have yet to find a leak.  My only theory at this point is during some warranty work a dealership must have disconnected a hose and forgot to fill it back up, or it is normal evaporation seeing as how I don’t remember the last time I topped off the coolant.

The entire time I was troubleshooting this system I found it interesting I was still using compressed air in some form, even on a liquid cooling system.  I then started to wonder if I am going to be able to see any EXAIR products while at that magical park in Orlando, hopefully something like the Roaring Banana Breath that is featured in our Super Air Amplifiers section of the catalog. Our amplifiers also get used to puff air at folks during other “4D” experiences throughout the world.

banana
EXAIR Super Air Amplifiers help disperse banana scents into the air and into the face of patrons at a theme park ride.

Nonetheless, compressed air helped me determine that my family’s vehicle is not going to be spraying coolant on the roadway during this trip and I am glad for it.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer Manager
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF