Tag: vacuum pumps

Porous vs. Non-porous Material Selection

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

EXAIR’s E-Vacs offer an excellent solution for a variety of applications such as pick and place, chucking, surface mounting, lifting, and vacuum forming.
When it comes to choosing the right model for your needs, there are a few key factors to keep in mind. While picking the correct vacuum cup size is crucial, and understanding the size and weight of the part is essential, one of the most important aspects is assessing the type of material you’re dealing with. In particular, is the material porous or non-porous?

Porous materials, as the name implies, contain numerous (very small) holes. This enables air to pass through when attempting to create a vacuum. It can be tricky when using an E-Vac. To tackle this issue, a high vacuum flow is necessary. In contrast, non-porous materials do not permit air to flow through, allowing for a higher vacuum level to be reached with a lower vacuum flow. If you’re aware of which category your material belongs to, we can choose the right E-Vac.

If you’re dealing with porous materials like paper, cardboard, or certain fabrics, we suggest using one of our vacuum generators that creates a low vacuum level along with a high vacuum flow. With vacuum levels reaching up to 21″ Hg and flows up to 18.5 SCFM, this type of E-vac generates more vacuum flow to tackle porosity and leakage. Plus, they can also lift or hold fragile materials, helping to avoid any warping or distortion of the surface from too much vacuum.

Cardboard – Photo by OpenClipart Vectors and licensed by Pixabay
Glass – Photo by dflamini and licensed by Pixabay

On the other hand, if your material is non-porous, such as glass, steel sheet, or plastic, you’ll need a generator that can create a high vacuum level with a lower vacuum flow. EXAIR’s non-porous high vacuum units can reach vacuum levels of up to 27″ Hg and vacuum flows of up to 15.8 SCFM. These vacuum generators provide the best holding capacity for heavy materials. You can find sizes that require as little as 2.3 SCFM of compressed air at 80 PSIG, and up to 30.8 SCFM for the largest and heaviest materials.

Once you’ve determined which vacuum generator is most suitable for your material, you will then need to select between our E-Vac accessories to complete your system. We offer different sizes and styles of vacuum cups, as well as mufflers (both standard and straight-through style). We also have auto-drain filters to ensure the compressed air supply is clean and moisture free. This will make your E-Vac system virtually maintenance free.

If you would like to talk to an Application Engineer to help you determine the best option for your application, give me a call!

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

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Accessories for Your Compressed Air Products

Published on by Al WooffittLeave a comment

Here at EXAIR we are very proud of our Intelligent Compressed Air Products. We have spent a lot of time discussing their many benefits, including their efficiency, the fact that many have no moving parts, little to no maintenance, meeting or exceeding OSHA safety standards for noise or dead end pressure. One thing we don’t talk as much about is the accessories that go along with and complement our products. Several of these accessory items are the reason why our compressed air products can boast about having little to no maintenance, or reduced noise levels. In this blog I want to cover some of these unsung heroes.

From left to right, a few value-added accessories for your Vortex Tube: Hot Muffler, Cold Muffler, Automatic Drain Filter Separator, Oil Removal Filter, and Solenoid Valve/Thermostat Kit.

Some of the most popular accessories we offer are our compressed air Filters and Regulators. We suggest using these with all our products (or even with ones that aren’t ours).

The Filter Separator is designed to remove moisture, dirt, and rust from your compressed air system. The 5-micron filter element ensures that contaminants don’t clog or harm your compressed air equipment.

An Oil Removal Filter (which should always be installed after our Filter Separator) provides even more precise filtration by getting rid of oil and solid particles with a 0.03-micron element.

Our Pressure Regulators let you choose the operating pressure. At EXAIR, we always advise running at the lowest pressure necessary to complete the task. Pressure Regulators help you achieve that, reducing unnecessary air usage and fine-tuning the performance of EXAIR products for your specific application.

We have some accessories designed specifically for certain products. For our Line Vacs, there’s the Line Vac Hose. You can also find Thermostats and Solenoid Valves that work great with our Cabinet Coolers, and if you’re using Vortex Tubes, we suggest checking out our Mufflers.

When it comes to our Air Knives, we offer a variety of fantastic options:

If you’re looking for a simple and dependable way to mount your Air Knife, our Universal Air Knife Mounting System is just what you need.

If your project needs something longer than our stock Air Knives, or if you want to manage different sections of the air flow separately, our Coupling Bracket Kits are ideal.

And if you want to simplify the plumbing for your Air Knife, don’t miss our Air Knife Plumbing Kits. They’re suitable for all Air Knives that are longer than 24 inches.

If you’re looking for plumbing options, we’ve got a range of compressed air hoses and fittings that will simplify things for you.

Our Coiled Hoses work great with our Safety Air Guns, giving you more freedom of movement while you work.

Our Compressed Air Hoses are often used alongside our Industrial Housekeeping products to provide the necessary reach for the drum and dolly.

Finally, if you’re looking for a way to mount or position your Air Nozzles, check out our Magnetic Bases, Stay Set Hoses, and Swivel Fittings that can help create a complete setup.

No matter what your application requires or the product you need, we’ve got a variety of complementary accessory products that will simplify installation and adjustments. If you have any questions about these or any other EXAIR products, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

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Application Spotlight: E-Vac Vacuum Generators Replace Vacuum Pumps

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

If you’re building a vacuum lifting system, you have two basic choices for equipment to create the vacuum: a mechanically driven vacuum pump, or an air operated Venturi. Today, I’m going to tell the tale of some folks who switched from the former to the latter, and why they did it.

This customer makes cans for food, just like the ones you see on the shelf at the supermarket (in fact, it’s very likely you see the actual cans they make on those shelves) out of thin steel sheets. A vacuum lifting system, consisting of two rubber vacuum cups on the ends of two fast moving cylinders (90 times a minute fast) pick up the sheets and move them into a feeder, where the sheet is cut, rolled, and formed into can shapes. A mechanical vacuum pump provided the suction for the cups, and it worked great…until it didn’t. See, vacuum pumps like those have rotating parts in tight tolerance with other parts, and over time, they wear out. Since this facility runs 24/7, so do the vacuum pumps. They also run loud, and hot, until they break down. Which the one they called me about had done five times in the previous year, causing unplanned shutdowns of the machine, each lasting at least two hours, depending on how complicated the repair was, and if they had the right parts on hand. The first part of that time was spent waiting for the pump to cool down to a temperature that the maintenance techs could safely crawl under the machine (it wasn’t even in a convenient location) to remove it for the repairs. If there was a bright side, the awful racket the pump made stopped when the pump did. Not much of a bright side, though, as that silence was the sound of lost production. And revenue.

So, when the customer called, we talked about which Vacuum Generator would be the best fit, and how they could be incorporated into the system. Since the machine moved so fast (again, 90 times a minute fast,) they’d need to be as close as possible to the vacuum cups. That wouldn’t be a problem – our E-Vac Vacuum Generators are small, and light, so they could be fitted right onto the lifting cylinders. The thin steel sheets sometimes had wood chips or splinters on them from the pallets they came on. So we looked at Adjustable E-Vacs, which have larger throats to pass that particulate, since it could have clogged the narrow throat of an In-Line E-Vac.

Compressed air flow through the inlet (1), then through and adjustable annular nozzle (2). As the airstream enters the vacuum flow, it expands and increases in velocity (3). A vacuum flow is induced, creating suction (4). The airflow that is drawn through the vacuum inlet mixes with the primary airstream, then exhausts on the opposite end (5).

Since we were using Adjustable E-Vacs, and size & weight were prime considerations, we decided on the Model 840008M Adjustable E-Vacs, which are the smallest & lightest. Being adjustable, they could be ‘dialed out’ for higher vacuum performance, if needed. Which, it turns out, they didn’t. In fact, they were able to reliably pick up the sheets with the compressed air pressure regulated down to 60psig, reducing the operating cost. Which was kind of a big deal, since they run 24/7.

After their success on the first machine, they outfitted their other three machines with the Adjustable E-Vacs. Now, they’re saving over $2,000.00 a year from the repairs they no longer have to do on the vacuum pumps, and don’t have to worry about lost production while they did those repairs. And if that wasn’t enough, the reduction in noise and elimination of the heat they threw off made the environment a LOT more comfortable for the operators.

With (14) In-Line Models (seven sizes, all available in “High Vacuum” for non-porous products and “Low Vacuum” for lifting objects with a porous surface,) and (4) Adjustable models to choose from, we’ve got the solution to your pick-and-place application.

If you’re building a vacuum lifting system, you’ve got choices. In this case, the best choice was EXAIR E-Vac Vacuum Generators. What’s the best choice for you? Let’s find out – give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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E-Vac’s: Choosing The Right Vacuum Generators and Cups For Non-Porous Object Lifting

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

For years, users worldwide have been building pick-and-place vacuum lifting systems using EXAIR E-Vac Vacuum Generators and Vacuum Cups. One of the very first calls I took after I started here in 2011 was from a customer who wanted to make an automated bench-top system for use in the packaging of small blister packs of consumer products. These products were small, so it was fairly easy to specify a compact and inexpensive setup that was easy on his compressor load. Which was good, because his compressor wasn’t all that big either. Here’s how we went about it:

Each product going into a blister pack was about the size of a roll of pennies, but much lighter, as they were hollow plastic tubes with lip balm in them. Our Model 900762 1″x0.5″ Oval Vacuum Cups were a perfect fit – they’ll hold half a pound with only 5″ Hg vacuum, so even if they didn’t make a perfect seal on the tube (which weighs just shy of an ounce), they’d work just fine.

With objects that weighed next to nothing, and a smooth, non-porous surface for the Vacuum Cups to seat on, we didn’t need a whole lot of vacuum generation power, so we went with a Model 810002M In-Line E-Vac High Vacuum Generator. Using a selection of our Vacuum Tubing & Connectors, they constructed an automated lifting system to package six of the tubes in their blister packs at a time.

This was a small, simple system that didn’t require an awful lot of engineering…our smallest Vacuum Cups and E-Vac Vacuum Generators were more than capable of handling the load. Other times, we have to (EXAIR Application Engineers actually say we “get to”) use math & physics to come up with the right system. Even when they require some of the proverbial “heavy lifting,” they can still be fairly straightforward. Consider this application for a steel plate:

  • 1/2″ steel plate, 4ft x 6ft, weighing ~490lbs.
  • Picking up from the top of a stack and placing onto a laser cutter.

First, we start with the selection of vacuum cup size. For a plate of this size, multiple cups are necessary – even if one vacuum cup was rated for the weight we’re considering, that would be incredibly unstable. Additionally, if one cup fails to make a good seal on the surface, more cups provide redundant protection against potentially dropping the load. We can use this Vacuum Cup Selection Table from the catalog:

Per the instructions, we multiply the weight of the object (490lbs in this case) by a safety factor of two if we’re picking it up horizontally from the top, or four if we’re picking it up vertically from the sides. Our Model 900761 6″ Large Round Vacuum Cups are rated at 148.8lbs each, and since:

980 lbs (2x the plate’s weight) ÷145.8 (rating in lbs for each Cup) = 6.7

We need at least seven of them to safely handle this load. Let’s use eight, though, for symmetry. If you’re wondering why I picked the weight capacity associated with 21″Hg when our High Vacuum In-Line E-Vacs can generate 27″Hg, it’s just in case one of the cups doesn’t make a perfect seal to the surface…we still want to be able to hold the plate, even if there is a little vacuum leakage. So, we’re overcompensating to add to our already calculated safety factor in the application.

Next, we’ll select our E-Vacs. For safety’s sake (I can’t stress how badly I DON’T want to be party to dropping a 490lb steel plate on anything, or anyone), we’ll use four E-Vacs. Since each E-Vac will be servicing two of our largest Vacuum Cups and the vacuum lines aren’t all that long, but the weight of the object being picked up is significant, I’ve picked our Model 810013M High Vacuum E-Vacs for their moderate vacuum flow (1.31 SCFM @24″Hg) and high vacuum level rating (27″Hg):

Each of our four E-Vacs will pull vacuum on two vacuum cups, in a ‘crisscross’ pattern so that if one fails, it doesn’t unbalance the load.

If the object is to be picked up from the side, then we use a 4x safety factor for the object’s weight. For example, a customer who replaces truck windshields transports them in vertical racks on their service trucks. They wanted to use one E-Vac and three Vacuum Cups for the manual lifting rig they had designed. One piece of a two-piece windshield is about 2ft x 3ft, and weighs about 50lbs.

200 lbs (4x the windshield’s weight) ÷ 3 (number of Cups specified) = 66.7 lbs per Vacuum Cup

Based on a weight rating of 73.2lbs @21″Hg, we used three of our Model 900759 4.25″ Large Round Vacuum Cups for this application. Since an operator wipes down the glass immediately before picking it up, and has good control of the lifting rig (so they can ensure the cups are properly seated on the surface), we selected a Model 810006M High Vacuum E-Vac, which still has a decent amount of vacuum flow (0.77 SCFM @24″Hg) in case of any leakage, and a 27″Hg vacuum level rating.

EXAIR also carries a comprehensive selection of Connector Fittings and Vacuum Hose or Tubing to connect these kinds of systems together. If you want to spec out a lifting/pick-and-place system, I’m here to help – give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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