Tag: Ultrasonic Leak Detector

Step 4 “6 Steps to Optimizing your Compressed Air”

Published on by EricKuhnash@EXAIR.comLeave a comment

Turn it off! When you pull your car in the garage what do you do? I believe the answer would be you turn it off. When you finish washing your hands what do you do? I believe that you turn off the water. When your finish baking your dinner, what do you do? I believe you turn off the oven. These all seem like natural habits that we learned through life but seemingly we tend to overlook, “turning it off” when using compressed air. One of the biggest savings you can find when working with your compressed air systems would be “Turning It Off” when not in use.

EXAIR has both manual and electronic driven options for turning your compressed air off while it is not needed. You can use manual (ball) valves to easily turn your compressed air on or off. Manual valves can be used at the point of use for anyone to simply turn the valve stopping the compressed air when it is not needed. A ball valve is a shut-off valve that controls the flow of a liquid or gas by means of a rotary ball having a bore. Rotating the ball a quarter turn (90 degrees) around its axis, the medium can flow through or is blocked. They are characterized by a long service life and provide a reliable closure over the life span, even when the valve is not in use for a long time.EXAIR has valves available from 1/4 NPT up to 1 NPT fittings.

Some systems may require turning your compressed air on/off on a more frequent basis so using an electronic form of shut off might be a preferred method. EXAIR has an Electronic Flow Control (EFC) that can be programmed to accommodate gaps of time ensuring the most efficient use of air. Our EFC is a user friendly, flow control for compressed air that is designed to minimize compressed air use on blow off, drying, cooling, conveying and statius elimination operations. The EFC combines a photoelectric sensor with a timing control that limits compressed air use by turning it off when no part is present. The timing control permits easy tuning to the application requirements while providing flexibility in sensing distance. The EFC also has eight programmable on and off modes.

EXAIR can help your company “go green” saving you money through efficient use of your compressed air. If you have questions or need help determining which of our products will help, please contact one of our Application Engineers as we are happy to help.

Eric Kuhnash
Application Engineer
E-mail: EricKuhnash@exair.com
Twitter: Twitter: @EXAIR_EK

Compressed Air Efficiency! “Step One”

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

I’m currently in the closing process of selling my first home. This is the house I got married in, brought my first child home to. Needless to say there has been a lot going on to get the place up to selling shape, one of those things was getting the HVAC system checked out to verify its running correctly and efficiently! (Spoiler, mine was running very well thank goodness)

With compressed air being considered a fourth utility its important we check the efficiency of the system and fix issues and install upgrades where we can! EXAIR has six simple steps to optimize your compressed air system. Following these steps will help you to cut electrical costs, reduce overhead, and improve your bottom line. In this blog, I will cover the first step – Measure the air consumption to find sources that use a lot of compressed air.

EXAIR Six Steps To Optimizing Your Compressed Air System

Data is important to have when diagnosing wasteful and problematic areas within your compressed air system. To measure air consumption, flow meters are used to find the volume or mass of compressed air per unit of time. Flow rates are very useful data points to find problems like leaks, over-use in blow-offs, waste calculations, and comparison analysis.

The first step to optimizing compressed air systems within an industrial facility is to get a known baseline. To do so, utilizing a digital flowmeter is an ideal solution that will easily install onto a hard pipe that will give live readouts of the compressed air usage for the line it is installed on.  There is also an additional feature that we offer on the Digital Flowmeters that can help further the understanding of the compressed air demands within a facility.

The Pressure Sensing Digital Flowmeters are available from 2″ Sched. 40 Iron Pipe up to 8″ Sched. 40 Iron Pipe.  As well as 2″ to 4″ Copper pipe.  These will read out and with the additional Data Logger or Wireless Capability options record the information. When coupled with the wireless capability an alarm can be set for pressure drops that give live updates on the system as well as permits data review to see system trends throughout the day.

Generating a pressure and consumption profile of a system can help to pinpoint energy wasters such as timer-based drains that are dumping every hour versus level based drains that only open when needed. A scenario similar to this was the cause of an entire production line shut down nearly every day of the week for a local facility until they installed flowmeters and were able to narrow the demand location down to a filter bag house with a faulty control for the cleaning cycle.

If you would like to discuss the best digital flowmeter for your system and to better understand the benefits of pressure sensing, please contact us.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

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Twitter: @EXAIR_JS

The Blog of all Blogs: A Quick Resource of Blogs that we Blogged

Published on by bdwagesLeave a comment

EXAIR started writing Blogs in 2008. Since then, we have written well over 2000 Blogs. There is a ton of information in our Blog section on the website. There is most likely a Blog or 10 written about nearly each one of our products. These are primarily written by application engineers that know a thing or two about our products. There are also many application Blogs, that may be very relatable to what you are doing. When you journey to our Blog page (or simply click Blog form EXAIR.com), simply type in a key word or two in our search bar. This search bar is located just below the first row of published Blogs on the right hand of the screen, here is a screenshot of that section (right). You can also choose to follow our blog here as well.

As application engineers, we get asked questions every day. Many of these questions are best answered in one (or more) of these 2000+ Blogs. Many times a picture or video can answer your questions much more precisely than a quick conversation or an email. Many times we will send you a blog link to help. Drawing from my own experience, and asking the other Application Engineers for their lists, I wanted to put our most referenced blogs in one helpful location. I’ve categorized these the best that I can, and hopefully this will be a useful resource for you today, and in the future.

OPTIMIZING YOUR COMPRESSED AIR SYSTEM

Six Steps to Optimizing Your Compressed Air System

This is one of the key sections to our blogs. One of our main goals is to help you optimize your system. Here are 6 blogs that go into detail on each of these key points:

  1. Six Steps to Optimization: Step 1 – Measure the Air Consumption
  2. Six Steps to Compressed Air Optimization: Step 2 – Find and Fix Leaks.
  3. Six Steps to Compressed Air Optimization: Step 3 – Use Efficient and Quiet Engineered Products
  4. Six Steps to Optimizing Compressed Air: Step 4, Turn it Off When Not in Use
  5. Installing Secondary Receiver Tanks: Step 5 in Optimizing Your Compressed Air System
  6. Six Steps to Optimization: Step 6 – Control the Air Pressure at the Point of Use to Minimize Air Consumption

INDUSTRIAL HOUSEKEEPING

This is a product line that has a lot of maintenance questions, probably because these products are used to clean up dirt, and where there is dirt, there can be problems, clogs and leaks:

One of the most common questions we have concerns the Reversible Drum Vacuum (RDV) refurbishment Blog. The RDV is used on the Reversible Drum Vac, and the Chip Trapper products. We offer a refurb service for a fee, but most of the time you can do this on your own by watching and following this blog: Cleaning the Reversible Drum Vac

The Chip Trapper has two very popular blogs as well: Finding and Fixing Chip Trapper Vacuum Leaks as well as Cleaning the Chip Trapper’s Directional Valve

CABINET COOLERS

  1. Calculating Heat loads for Cabinet Coolers
  2. Finding the correct internal temperature of your Electrical Cabinet – don’t use a temp gun
  3. Thermostat & Solenoid Valve
  4. How To Install An EXAIR NEMA 4 or 4X Cabinet Cooler® System
  5. EXAIR Side Mount Kits for NEMA Type 4-4X Cabinet Cooler® Systems
  6. Cold Air Distribution Kit Installation
  7. Installing A Dual Cabinet Cooler Hardware Kit
  8. How to identify your Cabinet Cooler

VORTEX TUBES

  1. Vortex Tubes for Dummies
  2. Adjusting the Vortex Tube
  3. Vortex Tube Cold Fraction – effects on flow and temperature
  4. Application: Creating Freeze Seals for water lines

SUPER AIR KNIVES

  1. Application: Bottle Drying with Super Air Knife (instead of blower)
  2. Application: Super Air Knives drying automotive parts
  3. How to position and mount your Air Knife
  4. Which Air Knife should you choose?
  5. Super Air Knife Plumbing Kits
  6. Maximizing Super Air Knives with Shims

LINE VACS / CONVEYOR SYSTEMS

  1. Why Line Vacs need ambient air
  2. How to drill out Line Vac Generator Holes for increased performance
  3. Application: Conveying Coffee Beans

AIR AMPLIFIERS

  1. Super Air Amplifier Ratios explained
  2. Air Amplifier vs Fan – for cooling
  3. Application: Super Air Amplifier evacuating smoke or fumes

AIR ATOMIZING SPRAY NOZZLES

  1. Choosing the right Atomizing nozzle
  2. No-Drip Nozzle repair video
  3. Atomizing Nozzle identification
  4. Application: Atomizing Spray nozzles and Gummy Bears

SAFETY AIR GUNS

  1. Putting the Safe in Safety Air Guns
  2. Safety Air Gun Accessories, Extensions, Chip Shields and more
  3. Chip Shield sizes and selections

GEN 4 STATIC ELIMINATORS

  1. Changing the Gen 4 Power Supply Fuse
  2. Replacing the rocker switch on a Gen 4 Power Supply
  3. Changing the high power cord on the Gen 4 Ion Air Cannon
  4. Application: Solving Static and Print quality in food packaging

E-VAC VACUUM GENERATORS

  1. How to build a custom E-Vac System
  2. Choosing the right size Vacuum Cups

ACCESSORIES – FILTERS AND REGULATORS

  1. Filter Separator and Pressure Regulator with coupling kit installation 
  2. Rebuilding an Automatic Drain Filter Separator 
  3. Overview of EXAIR accessories

CALCULATIONS AND MORE

  1. Calculating SCFM at any pressure
  2. ROI Calculations with EXAIR products
  3. Do you need a receiver tank?
  4. EXAIR’s Calculator Library
  5. EXAIR’s OSHA compliance

OPTIMZATION – EFC, FLOWMETERS, AND ULTRASONIK LEAK DETECTORS

  1. EFC – Application: Candy Company saves big money with EFC
  2. Flowmeter – How to install a Hot Tap Flowmeter
  3. Flowmeter – Moving and or using Block-Off rings

There are many more blogs and videos at your disposal. This is just a recap of many of our most used, most viewed and most helpful for the day-to-day conversations that happen here at EXAIR. If you have ideas for new blogs – we would love to hear that as well. Please feel free to reach out at any time for more information on any of our intelligent compressed air products.

Thank you for stopping by,

Brian Wages

Application Engineer

EXAIR Corporation
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Cover photo by clker-free-vector-image licensed by Pixabay

Ultrasonic Leak Detectors

Published on by bdwagesLeave a comment

With energy bills skyrocketing, it becomes critical to stop the waste. Air leaks are a constant part of any compressed air system. If you do not own an Ultrasonic Leak Detector, you are throwing money away. As air lines age, leaks happen. Rust erodes the pipes. Curves, twists and turns lead to weak joints. Fittings (especially push-in fittings) and other pipe connections will degrade and begin to leak. Day-to-day wear and tear, bumps and bruises will all cause small air leaks over time. Having an air leak in your system is similar to having a running toilet in your home. You won’t see any visible damage, but when you get that utility bill!

EXAIR Ultrasonic Leak Detector

It can be difficult to find the leaks in a large facility. The air lines could run a long way, with multiple twists and turns within your system. The area can be loud, and leaks can be very quiet… Of course the large leaks are easy to identify, see, hear and feel. But many leaks are very small, hard to locate and the noise form these leaks can be “Ultrasonic sound”, meaning that they are at a frequency between 20kHz and 100kHz, and cannot be heard by the human ear. To find these small leaks and to hear Ultrasonic sounds, you will need an Ultrasonic Leak Detector.

With this precision tool, you will be able to both hear and see where the leaks are. As you pass the Detector across the pipes the alarm lights will glow and grow, and if you have the noise canceling headphones on, you will also be able to hear the leak.

Here is an example of how costly 1 small 1/16th” leak can be:

Reach out today to discuss or order one of these money savings jewels, or any of our other intelligent compressed air products.

Thank you for stopping by,

Brian Wages

Application Engineer

EXAIR Corporation
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