Super Air Amplifiers: Smart Ways to Improve Your Processes

If you rely on compressed air for blow off, cooling, or ventilation, you already know the challenges: high energy costs, excessive noise, and inconsistent performance. That is where EXAIR’s Super Air Amplifiers can make a measurable difference—helping you move more air, use less compressed air, and solve problems more efficiently.

How Super Air Amplifiers Can Help You

Whether you are trying to improve throughput, reduce costs, or create a safer working environment, Super Air Amplifiers are designed with your goals in mind:

  • Get more airflow from the air you already use
    With amplification ratios up to 25:1, you can turn a small amount of compressed air into a powerful, high-volume airflow—helping you do more without increasing consumption.
  • Reduce noise on your plant floor
    If loud blowoff or open pipes are a concern, these units provide a balanced, laminar airflow that can be up to three times quieter, helping improve working conditions and support OSHA compliance by lowering overall noise within an application.
  • Lower operating costs
    By using compressed air more efficiently, Super Air Amplifiers help cut down on energy waste—especially compared to open tube blowoffs or inefficient nozzles.
  • Minimize maintenance and downtime
    With no moving parts, you do not have to worry about wear, breakdowns, or constant upkeep. Install them and focus on production—not repairs.
  • Adapt to your exact application
    Adjustable shims allow you to fine-tune airflow and force, so whether you need gentle drying or aggressive blowoff, you can dial in the performance you need. Use of a pressure regulator in addition, provides even finer adjustment of force and flow to really dial in exact needs.
  • Install quickly and move easily
    Compact, lightweight design with mounting flange makes Super Air Amplifiers simple to integrate into existing equipment or reposition as your process evolves.

Improve Your Blowoff and Drying – Super Air Amplifiers are built to solve everyday production challenges across a wide range of applications:

If you are struggling with parts that are not drying fast enough or debris that will not clear, Super Air Amplifiers can:

  • Clean chips, coolant, or contaminants from machined parts.
  • Blow away saw dust and chips from wide swaths to keep sensors clear.
  • Dry parts on conveyors without slowing production.
  • Reach complex geometries like channels and blind holes.

In real-world use, manufacturers have combined Super Air Amplifiers with targeted air jets to clean difficult transmission components that other methods could not manage effectively.

Speed Up Your Cooling Process

If hot parts are creating bottlenecks or safety concerns:

  • Cool castings faster without damaging them. Blowing ambient temperature air onto a glowing hot part is the industrial equivalent to blowing on a hot cup of coffee (the temperature differential is already there; the Super Air Amplifier delivers the large volume of cooling airflow to get the job done quickly.
  • Reduce waiting times for operators.
  • Keep production lines moving.

For example, a foundry eliminated delays caused by overheated parts by installing multiple units over a conveyor—allowing workers to handle parts immediately instead of waiting.

Improve Ventilation and Air Movement

If your workspace needs better airflow, the Super Air Amplifier’s Suction or Discharge end can be used effectively to:

  • Move heat away from critical areas.
  • Ventilate confined spaces.
  • Improve comfort and safety for operators.

Solve Unique or Challenging Applications

Super Air Amplifiers are not limited to traditional uses. They have even been used to create instant, high-velocity air blasts for special effects where conventional blowers failed due to noise or slow response. They have also been used in rather hi-tech applications such as protecting lasers and removing microscopic debris from etching operations in the semiconductor industry to produce finer detail and less contamination.

Integration Into Automated Systems

Super Air Amplifiers can be controlled automatically through use of EXAIR’s EFC – Electronic Flow Control System to turn the Super Air Amplifier on and off as needed to further save on compressed air use. It is also possible to control them with a simple, solenoid valve that can be tied into your own control system to provide the same, only when needed effect.

Why This Matters For You

Many facilities rely on makeshift solutions—open pipes, drilled tubing, or oversized blowers—that seem inexpensive upfront but cost more over time in energy, noise, and maintenance. Super Air Amplifiers offer an engineered alternative with performance being paramount to design.

Super Air Amplifiers give you a better alternative by helping you:

  • Use less compressed air while achieving better results.
  • Reduce noise without sacrificing performance.
  • Improve consistency across your process.
  • Eliminate inefficiencies that slow down production.

A Simple Upgrade with Big Impact

If you are looking for a straightforward way to improve your operation—without adding complexity, Super Air Amplifiers offer a proven solution. They help you clean, cool, dry, and ventilate more effectively, all while lowering costs and improving working conditions.

Bottom line: You get more performance from your compressed air system—and fewer headaches from the equipment that relies on it. I would encourage you to reach out to us and allow us to help you determine if Super Air Amplifiers can help you in your applications.

Neal Raker, International Sales / Application Engineering Manager

Extend Refractory Life with an Unusual (and Practical) Cooling Fix

How an EXAIR Super Air Amplifier can reduce hot-spot damage and save thousands in unplanned downtime.

Hot spots on refractory walls are common in high-heat operations, but premature refractory failure need not be. If you can quickly pull heat out of a problem area (without touching the lining), you can reduce thermal stress and keep your furnace running longer.

Figure 1. Targeted, non-contact cooling helps stabilize refractory hot spots before they become cracks or spalls.

The problem: localized hot spots

During heat cycles, refractory walls rarely heat perfectly evenly. Burner impingement, scale buildup, airflow changes, and normal process variation can create concentrated hot spots. Left unchecked, these areas run hotter than the surrounding area, accelerating wear that shows up as cracking, spalling, and ultimately downtime.

The solution: EXAIR Super Air Amplifier

A Super Air Amplifier converts a small amount of compressed air into a high-velocity, high-volume stream of ambient air. Aimed at a hot spot, the airflow impinges on the outside surface of the refractory to carry heat away quickly without contacting or mechanically disturbing the lining.

Because cooling is targeted and non-contact, it can reduce peak temperatures and thermal gradients in critical areas. The result: less thermal stress, slower localized erosion, and a better chance of getting maximum life from your refractory lining.

The payoff: more uptime and real savings

Even small gains in living life matter. Extending a campaign by days, or even hours, can help you delay an early reline, reduce emergency maintenance, and keep the furnace in production when it counts.

In many operations, that additional runtime translates into thousands of dollars savedthrough fewer relines, less lost production, and more predictable maintenance planning.

A simple cooling upgrade with a significant impact.
The EXAIR Super Air Amplifier is a dependable, low-maintenance solution for addressing refractory hot spots, protecting your furnace investment, and improving your bottom line. If hot spots are shortening your lining life, it’s worth considering as part of your standard operating response.

Neal Raker, Application Engineering Manager
nealraker@exair.com

Adjustable Air Amplifiers: Product Overview

Adjustable Air Amplifier

EXAIR manufactures two types of Air Amplifiers: Super Air Amplifier™ and Adjustable Air Amplifier™.  The Air Amplifiers can be used to cool, dry, clean, ventilate, exhaust and many other uses.  In this blog, I will focus on the features and benefits of the Adjustable Air Amplifiers.

The main difference between the Super Air Amplifier and the Adjustable Air Amplifier is the fact the Super Air Amplifier has a shim inside of it that sets the gap for the air flow.  Force and flow for the Adjustable Air Amplifier is changed by turning the exhaust plug with a pin wrench.  This will open or close the gap inside, changing the amount of vacuum and air flow.  When the desired performance has been found, we have a knurled lock ring to hold the flow at the desired level. This is great for changing environments where needs are regulated to different conditions.

The Adjustable Air Amplifiers come in either 303 Stainless Steel or Aluminum and are sized from ¾” to 4”.  We offer them in a kit which will add a filter separator and a pressure regulator to the mix.  The filter will clean the compressed air, and the regulator will control the amount of pressure to enable you to “dial it in”, so to say.  We also have a deluxe kit which will add another item, Electronic Flow Control, or EFC.  This unit has a photo-electric eye to control a timing circuit to turn on and off the Adjustable Air Amplifier.  This helps to save on compressed air usage. 

The maximum temperature rating for the Aluminum Adjustable Air Amplifier is 275oF (135oC) while the stainless-steel version is rated up to a maximum of 400oF (204oC).  The stainless steel version is also used for chemical resistance and food applications. 

They do not have any moving parts, so they will last a long time and require no maintenance. Since they do not employ a motor, they create a laminar airstream which makes them effective and quiet.  They use a Coanda profile to generate a low pressure on one side to entrain a large volume of ambient air along with the primary, compressed air flow.  The Air Amplifiers amplify the exhaust air up to 24:1, making them very efficient for the compressed air used to create the output flow.  They are designed to have hoses attached to the discharge or suction side if you wish to move the air to or from another location. 

EXAIR has many uses worldwide where our Air Amplifiers are being used.  If you have any questions or would like to discuss your application, you can contact the Application Engineers at EXAIR.  We would be happy to help. 

John Ball                                                                                     

Application Engineer

Email: johnball@exair.com

Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

Buy 1, Get 40 Free

Buy one, get one free is a phrase many of us are familiar with. Most of the time it is a good thing; we all like free stuff. What would you say to buy one, get 30 free? Or even 40 free? That’s not far off how our Air Knives perform. They entrain large volumes of ambient air, so for every 1 SCFM of compressed air you are paying for, you are getting 30–40 SCFM of additional free ambient entrained air.

So how are our Air Knives able to do this? We explain this phenomenon in more detail in this blog here, but in summary, a Super Air Knife takes advantage of the Venturi Effect. Named after Giovanni Venturi, who found out that when you increase the speed of a fluid through an orifice, the surrounding fluid will move along with it. This creates a region of low pressure, and the faster the speed, the lower the pressure. With low pressure, the air around rushes in to fill that gap and join the airstream. The quantity of ambient air that gets ‘pulled’ into the airstream is entrained air, or free air.

The engineered surface of the Super Air Knife is designed to minimize as much loss in air speed as possible, which maximizes the amount of free air that is being entrained. The ratio between free air and compressed air used is called the amplification ratio. Super Air Knives have an amplification ratio of 40:1, with our Standard Air Knives having an amplification ratio of 30:1. For comparison, a pipe with holes drilled will have an amplification ratio of between 2:1 and 5:1. As you can see, with a Super Air Knife you are getting a much better deal on your compressed air usage.

This additional free air adds more mass, which allows the Super Air Knife to do more work. You will get a harder hitting force than a comparable product while using less compressed air. This makes Super Air Knives especially good for cooling and drying applications, where moving large volumes of air is ideal.

EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Products such as (left to right) the Air Wipe, Super Air Knife, Super Air Nozzle, and Air Amplifier are engineered to entrain enormous amounts of air from the surrounding environment.

It’s not just our Air Knives that take advantage of the Venturi effect to produce large amplification ratios. Many of our products are designed with efficiency in mind, including our Air Amplifiers, Air Wipes, and Air Nozzles and Jets, to name a few. If you would like to discuss how an EXAIR engineered compressed air product can amplify your process, then give us a call!

Al Wooffitt
Application Engineer

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