Tag: tri-clover

What’s So Great About the EXAIR Sanitary Flange Line Vacs?

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

The greatness of EXAIR Line Vac Air Operated Conveyors can be summed up in a simple math(like) formula:

Line Vac + Hose or Pipe + Compressed Air = Instant Conveyor System

Today, dear reader, we’re going to explore the factors that contribute to the particular greatness of our Sanitary Flange Line Vacs:

Common industrial piping connections are difficult to sanitize, and offer ample breeding ground for bacteria.

Clean In Place capability. Many industrial fluid piping installations are made up of threaded or soldered connections, like those shown in the photo to the right. These products are easy to work with, readily available, and relatively inexpensive. They’re also unacceptable in facilities that require frequent cleaning to eliminate contamination – biological and otherwise – from their products & processes. Equipment in pharmaceutical, food production, and dairy farm facilities must be able to be sanitized effectively, so they’ll all use pipe & fittings that comply with specifications set forth in ISO Standard 2852 (Stainless steel clamp pipe couplings for the food industry) specifications for dimensions, surface roughness, materials, and assembly & hygienic requirements. While they’re known by a number of names – Tri-Clamp, Tri-Clover, S-Clamp, Sanitary, 3A, among others – they’re all aimed at compliance with ISO 2852. And EXAIR Sanitary Flange Line Vac products are compatible with any of them.

Sanitary Fittings come in number of configurations for quick & easy “making & breaking” for cleaning.

Diverse range of applications. While food & pharma are, by far, the main users, the ease of connection (and disconnection & reconnection), smooth ID specification for pipe, durability of stainless steel construction, and elimination of seams in fittings are all advantageous for other users as well:

  • A chemical company needed to remove long strands of cotton fiber away from a process, and convey it over a 60ft run to a scrap bin. The smooth ID of sanitary-grade stainless steel piping allows them to use a Model 161150-316 1-1/2″ Sanitary Flange Line Vac for reliable conveyance of this material, with no hang-ups or clogging in the long run of pipe.
  • An ammo manufacturer uses our Model 161200-316 2″ Sanitary Flange Line Vacs to convey small shell casings, in bulk from where they’re pressed, to where they’re loaded. They, too, like the smooth, seam-free pipe for conveyance, and the durability of all stainless steel construction. Another benefit is the quickness and ease of breaking & making the connections, as each Line Vac is used to convey these casings to multiple loading stations.
Sanitary Flange fittings make it easy to keep the inlet of this Model 161150-316 1-1/2″ Sanitary Flange Line Vac protected while not in use (left). The spring-loaded clamp makes it easy to swap out the cap for a barb fitting (middle) for use with a flexible suction hose (right).

Type 316 Stainless Steel Construction. Stainless Steel is specified for material construction for a number of reasons such as durability, aesthetics, and corrosion resistance. There are many alloys, and most will give you the smooth & shiny surface that folks think about when they think of stainless steel. Type 316, due to its hardness and particularly high resistance to chloride pitting corrosion, is extraordinarily popular in food & pharmaceutical application.

EXAIR Sanitary Flange Line Vacs come in four popular sizes, and are ideal for applications in the food and pharmaceutical industries…and others.

If you’ve got bulk material to move from “point A to point B”, EXAIR has a number of solutions to choose from. If you want to find out more, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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Sanitary Flange Air Conveyors in Type 316SS

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

EXAIR currently offers a multitude of configurations when it comes to the Line Vac – air operated conveyors product line.  One of the easiest to install and best suited for food, pharmaceutical, chemical or other sanitary environments is the Sanitary Flange Line Vac¯.

Model 161200-316 – 316 Stainless Steel Sanitary Flange Line Vac

These are offered in four standard pipe sizes, 1-1/2″, 2″, 2-1/2″ and 3″.  The models are only available from stock in 316 stainless steel.   The sanitary flange is designed to be compatible with ISO 2852.  These can easily be used with a “Tri-Clover” clamp and gaskets of varying materials to fit your needs.  They have no internal moving parts and offer a compact, high throughput, quiet conveyance for parts, gases or ingredients.

EXAIR’s Sanitary Flange Line Vacs are offered from stock in four sizes.

Easily install into existing pipe runs for improved process performance.

With the sanitary flange design installation or removal are simplified in order to remove the unit for cleaning or reversing.  If you would like to discuss just how easy these are to upgrade your existing system or to install into a new system, please contact an Application Engineer.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

Sanitary Flange Line Vacs for Bulk Conveying

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

Piping systems have been a hallmark of human civilization for almost as long as people have been living in community with each other. Evidence of complex earthen pipe systems, with flanged fittings & asphalt sealants, date to 2700 BC. These were used for crop irrigation, potable water distribution, and wastewater removal in ancient civilizations from the Mediterranean to the Far East.

Over the centuries, new ways to use pipe led to new ways to make pipe.  Scientists and engineers figured out ways to make pipe stronger, lighter, cheaper, and in a variety of materials.  One of the more recent milestones is the development of sanitary piping and fittings.  The stringent cleanliness controls in certain industries (food and pharmaceutical, I’m looking at you) require highly corrosion resistant materials of construction.  The inside & outside surfaces of the pipe have to be finely finished so that they can be thoroughly and positively cleaned, with no crevices, “nooks & crannies,” etc., for material to gather or cling.  And since regular cleaning & sterilization is performed, the fittings must be able to be made & unmade in a manner that still provides for positive sealing when the system is restored to operation.

EXAIR Line Vac Air Operated Conveyors have always been well suited for applications like this.  With their open, unobstructed throats and smooth bores, they’re intuitively easy to clean, by design.  And we’ve made them, for years, in Type 316 Stainless Steel – the preferred material of construction for many food and pharmaceutical applications.  Many users in these industries were able to install them in sanitary piping systems by welding the flanges on our Stainless Steel Line Vacs, or by installing adapters on our Threaded Stainless Steel Line Vacs.

In the spring of 2017, EXAIR released the Sanitary Flange Line Vac with those same users in mind – eliminating the need to weld or thread flanges onto existing products.  They feature the same conveyance power as our Stainless Steel Line Vacs, and can even be modified to meet Heavy Duty Line Vac performance, if needed.  There are four sizes: 1-1/2″, 2″, 2-1/2″, and 3″…which covers the most popular size range of sanitary pipe systems.

While the sanitary piping systems are certainly most often found in those cleanliness-critical food & pharma type applications, other users incorporate them because of the smooth, continuous bore of the pipe and fittings, as opposed to a threaded pipe system, where the OD of the pipe threads into the ID of the fittings, causing a “step” in the throughput.  Because sanitary fittings mate via face-to-face flange seals, this eliminates that “step” which can make for a catch-point for certain items.  It’s for this very reason that a popular ammunition manufacturer uses sanitary pipe systems to convey shell casings…because they tumble with such turbulence in the air flow, they are especially prone to hanging up on any kind of catch-point.  So, they use sanitary piping & fittings, long radius elbows, and EXAIR Model 161150-316 1-1/2″ Sanitary Flange Line Vacs.

Air conveying of certain items, like these ammo shell casings, can be prone to clogging or jamming in systems where pipe, hose, and/or fittings are inserted into each other, creating catch-points.

EXAIR has a wide selection of engineered compressed air products that are “textbook” solutions for certain applications, but also make perfect sense for use in places you might not have thought of.  If you have a bulk material conveyance operation you’d like to discuss, give me a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
EXAIR Corporation
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Shells photo courtesy of hydropeek  Creative Commons License

EXAIR Line Vac, Air Operated Conveyors, Expand to Include Sanitary Flange Models

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

EXAIR’s Air Operated Conveyor product line just expanded, making it easier than ever for a wide range of industries to solve an ever growing range of bulk conveyance applications. Before we get to that, let’s look at just how versatile the Line Vacs are:

The standard Line Vac has been making bulk conveyance as easy as it could get for years now. They come in sizes from 3/8″ to 5″, and all you need is a hose to move material from point A to point B.

Lightweight and durable aluminum is the most popular choice, but we make them in stainless steel (Types 303 and 316) for heat and corrosion resistance. For extreme heat, the High Temperature option affords protection to 900F (482C) in either 303SS or 316SS.

When rigid pipe is preferable to hose, our Threaded Line Vacs offer the same performance:

These come with male NPT threads from 3/8″ to 3″. They’re also available in aluminum, 303SS and 316SS, and High Temperature versions, same as the standard Line Vac.

If you need high power for higher conveyance rates, longer distances, or very dense material, the Heavy Duty Line Vacs are what you’re looking for.

They come in sizes from 3/4″ to 3″, with options for slip-on hose or threaded pipe. They’re also made of a hardened alloy for superior abrasion resistance.

Light Duty Line Vacs are aimed at applications implied by the name…when smaller volumes of low density material don’t require all the head & flow generated by the standard or Heavy Duty models, these are as quick & convenient as the rest, and come in sizes from 3/4″ to 6″.

They’re also ideal when fragile parts might be subject to damage in the high velocity, turbulent air flow produced by the other models.

The newest additions to the Line Vac family are the Type 316 Stainless Steel Sanitary Flange models:

Also known as Tri-Clamp or Tri Clover, these connectors have a variety of advantages beneficial to certain industries: Quick to make up & take apart. No nooks or crevices, so they’re easy to clean. Wide variety of fittings, pipe and tubing are readily available.

These are especially popular in pharmaceutical, food, and brewing applications.

If you’d like to find out more about how to move bulk product quickly, easily, safely, and cleanly, give me a call.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
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