Tag: venturi air movers

Air Amplifiers, Pressure vs Flow

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

At least once a week I get a call about our line of Super Air Amplifiers regarding increasing the air pressure on a compressed air system. Well, the Super Air Amplifiers are perfect at increasing the volume of air you exhaust into an application by increasing the output air flow through entrainment of ambient air along with the primary compressed stream! So, they will increase volume for exhausting to atmosphere, but they do not increase your compressed air system pressure for an application.

But, let’s break the two things down a little further!

EXAIR Super Air Amplifiers!

EXAIR Air Amplifiers are a low-cost way to move air, smoke, fumes and light materials. These Air Amplifiers use the Coanda effect to create a low pressure area which draws in surrounding air to efficiently deliver a high volume of air to a target. Using a small amount of compressed air as their source, Air Amplifiers are among the most efficient products within EXAIR’s entire product line. EXAIR Air Amplifiers will create output flows up to 25 times their air consumption rate and deliver it at a high velocity. The entrainment of outside air amplifies the total volume of air at the output, which also increases force, cooling ability and circulation.

Air Amplifiers use the Coanda Effect to generate high flow with low consumption.

EXAIR’s Air Amplifiers have no moving parts, assuring maintenance-free operation. Fine-tuning flow, vacuum and velocity are easily controlled by regulating the input pressure. For gross adjustment of air flow and vacuum an internal shim is used to increase or decrease the internal “air gap” that the compressed air flows through. Both the vacuum and discharge ends of the Air Amplifier can be ducted, making them ideal for drawing fresh air from another location, or moving smoke and fumes away from an application.

Pressure Boosters

When folks first call in about Air Amplifiers, they generally have in their mind the concept of a pressure booster. Pressure boosters, by comparison, are completely different and are typically more complex systems involving motors or air cylinders in conjunction with feedback and operation controls. Their main job is to increase a baseline pressure in a system to keep low pressure situations from occurring within high value systems or for an unusual case of a pneumatic application that requires pressure higher than the facility, system pressure. For example, in robotic spray booths, the robots and valves require 50 PSIG but if they drop below 20 PSIG, the system can damage itself. A pressure booster can be installed to keep lower pressure systems maintained at a higher pressure for application needs. The systems on which pressure boosters are used tend to be more “closed loop” where a static pressure can be maintained. If a dynamic (moving) higher pressure is required for an application, a booster air compressor intended only for that application may be used to keep the entire facility pressure from having to be raised only to accommodate the one application.

It is my genuine hope that the above explanation regarding EXAIR Air Amplifiers versus air pressure amplifiers (Boosters) is helpful. If you have questions regarding EXAIR Intelligent Air Products please contact myself or one of our Application Engineers as we are always ready to help.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer


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EXAIR Air Amplifiers Blow Fans out of the Water!

Published on by Jordan T ShouseLeave a comment

EXAIR’s product line contains many products that can be used for cooling. The focus of this blog will be Super Air Amplifiers. These often times get placed in a head-to-head competition with an electric fan. The best part, they easily come out on top.

When looking at the benefits other than performance and rate of cooling due to air entrainment, many customers prefer the Super Air Amplifier due to the fact there are no moving parts. This comes into play when cooling within in a hard-to-reach area or within a harsh process is needed.  Placing an electric motor with a blade held on by fasteners may not be desirable from a maintenance standpoint. The Super Air Amplifiers do not require electricity and there is not a motor or bearings that would need to be replaced or inspected.

Another benefit is the small footprint of the Super Air Amplifier. This can also be seen within the video below where the Air Amplifier is shown is able to produce 341 SCFM (9,650 SLPM) in amplified airflow. Compared to the fan in the video, the amplifier is less than a 1/4 of the size but outperforms the fan in cooling the metal block! This allows users to place a small unit inside a tight area or chamber that requires large volumes of air.  For instance, a rotomolded part that has a large chamber, and it needs surfaces to be cooled in order for the part to hold its shape from the mold rather than warp.  This can also be coupled with the fact that a Super Air Amplifier can be ducted on either the suction or discharge side in order to retrieve cool air or move the warm air out of the area.

Speaking of warm, the Super Air Amplifiers are also manufactured to withstand up to 275 °F (135 °C) from stock.  Stainless Steel and High-temperature models go well beyond that temp, up to 700 °F (374 °C). Custom-designed (flanges and different materials are common) versions are also available with short lead-times.

If you would like to discuss the benefits to a Super Air Amplifier further, feel free to contact us.

Jordan Shouse
Application Engineer

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Stories From The Field: Automotive Plant Tour

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

Throughout my years I have been in many manufacturing facilities. Oddly enough, I have seen nearly every part of a passenger car manufactured and then fully assembled. The amount of compressed air applications in automotive supplier and manufacturing facilities are tremendous. Here are some stories from just a few we have encountered over the years, and all of them can be found in our Application Database.

Air Wipe – How it works
  1. A component manufacturer, specifically a steering and transmission component manufacturer was having issues with machined parts coming out of a CNC machine with too much oil based cutting fluid on them and not passing inspection process because the oil would throw off the automated measuring system. The part was a splined shaft that the high surface tension oil stayed in the splines. The part was removed from the machine via robotic loader and set onto a fixture. The path to the fixture was outfitted with a Super Air Wipe so the robotic loader could move the part into and out of the air wipes’s airflow and remove the oil. The converging airflow of the Super Air Wipe was ideal to keep the peaks and valleys of the shaft clean of oil and they were able to direct oil back into the cutting machine so no separate collection system was needed.
Robotic Welder fitted with EXAIR Super Air Wipe

2. A seat bracket manufacturer had issues protecting the lenses on their vision systems from welding spatter. They were again able to reduce the replacement / repair downtime by installing a 9″ Super Air Wipe in front of the robotic mounted lens and keep the spatter / fumes from ever making it to the lens, resulting in expanded run times between repair / downtime.

Cooling with Air Amplifiers

3. A forging company manufacturing the pistons was having issues reducing the temperature of the pistons as they were assembled to the connecting rods. The solution for them was to install a series of Super Air Amplifiers over the fixtured, indexing line and at each dwell station a Super Air Amplifier would activate and cool down the assembly by moving large volumes of ambient air mixed with small amounts of compressed air onto the surfaces.

4. An automotive manufacturer had issues with stamping shavings and welding debris staying on the surface of parts and fixtures resulting in rework and defective parts. Implementing a series of Super Air Nozzles, and Super Air Knives resulted in debris removal that saved tooling rework as well as production reject parts.

5. Another automotive / recreational vehicle manufacturer needed help with their torture test machine for suspension components. They were utilizing fans to try and keep shock sensors cool and replicate air movement. electric fans were not able to provide a focused airflow and so enter the Super Air Amplifiers. These have also been utilized on engine torture test machines.

1 – Chevrolet Corvette C7 2014 – LT1 Engine Testing on Dyno

These are just a select few of the actual applications that I have actually help with over the course of the years. As a whole, we have helped endless number of automotive industry applications. It doesn’t matter if you are in the automotive industry or just a garage tinkerer, contact and Application Engineer and let us help you with your point of use compressed air application today.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

1 – Autoblog_gr; Chevrolet Corvette C7 2014 – LT1 Engine Testing on Dyno – retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3h8imnOPwU on 8/31/2022

Air Amplifiers to Increase Volume of Airflow Aid in Cooling, Cleaning, Circulation, Venting

Published on by bdwagesLeave a comment

Air Amplifiers are a perfect solutions for utilizing air for Venting, Exhausting, Cooling, Drying, or Cleaning with no moving parts. As the name implies, these tools produce a high volume and a high velocity of outlet flow. These are very quiet, efficient and can amplify your air consumption up to 25 times… Here is a great diagram and description of exactly how these work:

Air Amplifiers use the Coanda Effect to generate high flow with low consumption.

As you can see, these fine pieces of engineering genius have no moving parts, and require no electricity. You can easily control the flow, force and velocity by opening or closing the air gap (fixed with a shim) and regulating the the supply air. These can also be ducted on each end to either pull in or remove air or fumes from one room or area to another.

SUPER?? What makes our Super Air Amplifier super? I’m glad you asked. The Super Air Amplifier has a patented design that uses a special shim to maintain critical position of the component parts. This results in a precise amount of compressed air to be released at exact intervals towards the center of the Super Air Amplifier. These jets of air create a constant, high velocity outlet flow across the entire cross-sectional area. This balances out the airflow to maximum performance, this simultaneously minimizes wind shear, causing sound levels up to 3 x’s quieter than other comparable air movers. To completely understand how much air this Super Air Amplifier amplifies (try saying that fast 5 times), please see the below chart.

As you can see, the amplification ratio is between 12 and 25 x the amount of air consumed. For the right applications, these are game changers… Pro tip – notice that even the highest level still falls under OSHA guidelines for noise!!

If you have any questions, or would like to discuss your application directly, please reach out today. We would love to speak with you, and help wherever we can.

Thank you for stopping by,

Brian Wages

Application Engineer

EXAIR Corporation
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