Tag: wire wipe

Helpful Tips For Air Wipe Usage

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

Probably the most common application for EXAIR’s line of Air Wipes is blowing off continuous runs of pipe, hose, tube, wire, etc. The 360° converging air flow sweeps the entire circumference evenly, for efficient & quiet blow off, cooling, or drying. The split ring design means the operator doesn’t have to “thread” the product through the Air Wipe:

Split ring design eliminates the need for product “threading” through the Air Wipe.

Because of their 360° converging air flow, they’re also incredibly well-suited to another application: blowing off the end – or tip (to make the pun in the title work) – of an applicator.

  • A manufacturer of automated paint systems for the automotive industry fits spray heads to the ends of robotic arms to coat vehicle bodies. They install Model 2439 9″ Standard Air Wipes for the robots to periodically dip the spray heads through to clean off excess paint so it doesn’t drip inadvertently onto the surfaces that they’re putting a nice, even coating onto.
  • A custom furniture builder used a robotic system to apply glue to wood parts prior to fitting them together. A small amount of glue remained on the tip of the applicator, which would harden and build up over time, eventually getting to the point where not enough glue was applied. They periodically removed & cleaned the tips, but sometimes not before improperly glued products made it through production. They installed Model 2400 1/2″ Super Air Wipes for the robots to dip the applicator tips through to blow off the glue residue. This eliminates glue buildup and defective furniture parts.
  • A machine builder’s design incorporated robotic arms to dip two files in oil before using them to deburr parts, and wanted to stop oil from dripping off the file in between the oil dip and point of use. They installed two Model 2431 1″ Standard Air Wipes (one for each file) and set pressure regulators to remove excess oil while leaving enough to properly lubricate the file, and made the operation drip free.
  • A shop that repairs & tests diesel fuel injectors passes them through a Model 2432 2″ Standard Air Wipe by hand to blow off solvent after removing them from a cleaning tank, prior to reassembly & testing.

If you need to blow off parts from all sides, look no further than EXAIR Air Wipes. They come in sizes from 3/8″ to 11″, in stock. If you’d like to discuss your application or product selection, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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EXAIR Standard Air Wipe replaces a blower system to dry plastic pipes

Published on by John BallLeave a comment

A manufacturer of special pipes sent me a video of their operation.  After the pipes were extruded, they would run them through a wash system to cool and harden them.  After the wash system, they needed to remove the excess water from a 3” (76mm) diameter tube at a speed of 50 feet per minute (15 meters per minute).  They were using a blower system to blow the water off the pipe with a series of blower air knives.  The company was looking to increase the speed of the lines to be more productive and profitable.  As they did some trial runs, they were only getting around 75% dryness.  They needed a better way to get the pipes dry before ink printing.

This company makes plastic pipes ranging from 2” (51mm) to 8” (203mm) in diameter.  When they searched for pipe and tube blow-off devices, they came across EXAIR and our Air Wipe product line.  The design of the EXAIR Standard Air Wipe blows compressed air at a 30-degree angle toward the center in a 360-degree air pattern.  It uses a Coanda profile to maximize the entrainment of ambient air into the compressed air stream to produce a strong force.  As a non-contact wiping device, the Standard Air Wipe is very efficient and powerful. EXAIR also offers the Super Air Wipes for more stringent applications. You can read more about them here: What’s So Super About EXAIR’s Super Air Wipe?

Standard Air Wipe

For this application, I recommended the model 2484 4” Standard Air Wipe Kit.  This kit includes our Standard Air Wipe, a Filter Separator, a Regulator, and a Shim Set.  With a ½” or 13mm clearance, it gave ample room to allow the 3” (76mm) pipe to travel through without touching and to allow for ambient air to be entrained.  The Filter Separator will remove bulk liquids and debris from the compressed air to keep the unit performing optimally and to keep the pipe from getting dirty.  The Pressure Regulator is used to control the amount of force.  This helps to not overuse the amount of compressed air required for the cleaning.  With a Pressure Regulator, you can make fine adjustments to get the proper amount of force on your target, while the shims in the Shim Set will give you coarse adjustments.  With the Pressure Regulator and Shim Set together, you can “dial in” the correct amount of force required for the different speeds.  The Standard Air Wipe Kits will give you the most versatility in your system to optimize the 360-degree blow-off.

As the customer removed the original blower unit and attached the Standard Air Wipe to their compressed air system, they noticed some great things.  The speed of production was increased by about 10%, which matched the maximum speed of the machine.  The water removal from the surface was nearly 100%.  They also noticed that the Standard Air Wipe was much quieter – near 82 dBA at 80 PSIG (5.5 bar).  The nearby operators were very happy with this choice, as the blower-type system was very loud.  And, with no moving parts, the Air Wipe did not need the same maintenance requirements as the blower system did, and it used a much smaller footprint.  Also, we use a split design to mount the Standard Air Wipe around the outside of the pipe without cutting into the extruded lengths.

Here are some comparisons with the EXAIR Standard Air Wipes to a blower-type system. 

  1. Cost:
    1. Blower System: Blower-type air knives are expensive to set up.  They require a blower, knives, and large (3″ – 4″ diameter) ducting.  To have any flexibility, a control panel will be needed with a VFD to control the speed of the blower.
    1. Standard Air Wipe: It is a fraction of the cost.  With their system, we were roughly 1/10 the cost, even with the kit.  No capital expense report would be needed.    
  2. Installation:
    1. Blower System: The customer stated that it took them a week to install the entire system before they were able to operate.  They had to run electrical wires, controls, and ducting, and they even had to change their system design to accommodate the blower size. 
    1. Standard Air Wipe: They mounted the filter and the regulator on the conveyor and ran tubing to the Standard Air Wipe.  Even with a fabricator making a bracket to fit the Standard Air Wipe around the pipe, they had the system up and running in less than two hours.    
  3. Size:
    1. Blower System: The footprint of the blower is large, and it takes up floor space.  The 3” ducting had to be run to an oversized air knife.  With the congestion in the area, it was difficult to optimize the position and the blowing angle to adequately dry the pipes.      
    1. Standard Air Wipe: With its compact design, the Super Air Knife packs a large force in a small package.  It has a small footprint that fits around the pipe.  It only required a ¼” NPT compressed air line to supply the compressed air.  It opened up the floor space as well as the general area. 
  4. Maintenance:
    1. Blower System: The blower filter had to be changed regularly, and the system had to be checked for preventative maintenance.  Being that the blower motor is a mechanical device, the bearings will wear, and the motor will fail over time.  These items need to be checked quarterly as a PM, which increases the cost of running the system.    
    1. Standard Air Wipe: No moving parts to wear out.  The only maintenance would be to change the filter once a year. 
  5. Versatility:
    1. Blower System: They did have a VFD to control the blowing force.  But it was still very limited.  With the increase in pipe speed, it was beyond the maximum capacity of the blower. 
    1. Standard Air Wipe: With a regulator and the shim set, the blowing force can be controlled easily, from a breeze to a blast.  With their application, the customer only required 40 psig with a standard 0.002” shim to clean and dry the pipes.  They had the option to adjust the regulator or change the shim to get the appropriate amount of blowing force with the different line speeds. 
  6. Quiet:
    1. Blower System: With the blower and turbulent air flow, the units are very loud.  It had a sound level near 93 dBA, and with the operators working around the system, they needed PPE for hearing. 
    1. Standard Air Wipe: These units are very quiet.  As mentioned above, the decibel level is only 82 dBA at 80 PSIG (5.5 bar).  At 40 PSIG (2.8 bar), the sound level is much lower. This was very nice for the operators to work around as it wasn’t a constant noise nuisance, and it was below the OSHA limit for PPE. 

With the creation of the EXAIR Standard Air Wipes, uniform cleaning, cooling, and blowing around the outside of parts is a simple task.  You don’t have to worry about too many nozzles to target the circumference or fabricated blow-off air knives that will waste time and money.  At EXAIR, we offer a 30-day unconditional guarantee for U.S. and Canadian customers.  This customer used the 30-day trial to try the Standard Air Wipe.  After the testing, they purchased the model 2491 11” Standard Air Wipe Kit for their largest pipe.  You can order them from our website at http://www.EXAIR.com or call us at 800-903-9247.  If you need help selecting the proper size for your application, you can contact an Application Engineer at EXAIR for help.

John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

How EXAIR Uses Fluidics To Make Efficient, Quiet, and Safe Compressed Air Products

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

EXAIR Intelligent Compressed Air Products incorporate several distinct principles of fluidics into our engineered designs. To be clear, these principles aren’t exclusive to making quiet and efficient compressed air products. I personally have used them all for business and pleasure over the years. In the Navy, for example, the air ejectors that pulled vacuum on the main condensers where our turbines dumped their ‘used’ steam were basically great big Venturis – they restricted the diameter through which a fluid (steam, in this case) flowed, gradually increased that diameter, and doing so, changed the velocity so that a low pressure area (or vacuum) developed in the throat:

Graphic representation of the Venturi effect.

EXAIR E-Vac Vacuum Generators use the Venturi effect to draw vacuum of up to 27″Hg. They’re typically used with Vacuum Cups for pick-and-place material handling applications.

Here are a few examples of Mr. Venturi’s discovery, implemented in modern industry.

I first learned about the Bernoulli principle on a grade school field trip to the National Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, about an hour from where I grew up. See, this Bernoulli guy discovered that when there is an increase in the speed of a fluid, a simultaneous decrease in fluid pressure occurs at the same time. That’s why airplane wings are shaped like they are – flat on the bottom and curved on top…when the air flowing that extra distance over the top speeds up to get to the back of the wing as fast as the air that’s simply flowing underneath the wing does, the decrease in pressure on top causes the wing (and the plane it’s attached to) rise in the air.

Bernoulli’s Equation: this is the math that proves it works.

The Bernoulli principle is incorporated in to the design & operation of EXAIR engineered Air Knives, Air Wipes, Air Amplifiers, and Air Nozzles.

The Coanda effect is the third fluidics principle that’s incorporated into the design & operation of many EXAIR engineered compressed air products. Its namesake, Henri Coanda, was an early 20th Century aeronautical engineer who discovered that if a jet of fluid exiting an orifice flows across a surface, it’ll tend to not only adhere to and follow that surface (even if it curves or bends), but also entrain fluid from the surrounding area.

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

There are a couple of easy – and interesting – experiments that demonstrate the Coanda effect, both of which I used when I was a Cub Scout leader and our Pack’s Webelos den was earning their Science Activity Pin:

Turn a faucet on and let the running water flow over the convex ‘bottom’ of a spoon. Everything we know about the laws of gravity say that when the water reaches the ‘bottom-most’ point on the spoon’s convex surface, it ought to fall straight down…but it doesn’t:

Another experiment that defies everything we think we know about gravity can be performed with a ball, and a source of air flow. Here’s a short video, showing how the air flow from an Air Amplifier ‘wraps’ around a ball and holds it in that jet of air:

The Webelos den did this with a leaf blower and a playground ball. Unlike a lot of things I’ve done, I DEFINITELY encourage you to try THAT at home.

For forty years now, EXAIR has been putting these principles of fluidics into practice by engineering & manufacturing the most efficient, quietest, and safest compressed air products on the market. If you’d like to find out how we can help you get the most out of our products – and your compressed air system – give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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Compressed Air Use In The Agriculture Industry

Published on by Russ BowmanLeave a comment

I didn’t grow up ON a farm, but more than a few of the kids I went to school with did. My wife’s grandpa had a farm, and one of her uncles still does. Farmers have always been the most diversely talented people I’ve ever known. They’re well versed in soil chemistry and plant biology. They have a keen understanding of climate & weather patterns which allows them to sow seed after the last frost in early spring, and gather their last harvest before the first frost of mid-to-late autumn. Most of them are also expert mechanics, welders, and plumbers as well, to avoid costly repair bills on equipment they operate in fairly harsh conditions. And the ones that raised livestock, I’d stack their veterinary knowledge & skills up against just about any vet’s office.

In my twelve years with EXAIR, I’ve had the pleasure of talking with many farmers & other folks in agricultural-type jobs, and a lot of the stuff they use our products for is downright fascinating. Here are two prime examples – one from an agricultural product provider, and one from an actual agricultural job:

*A company that makes irrigation drain pipe uses Model 2485 5″ Standard Air Wipe Kits to cool and dry their extruded 4″ pipe before cutting to length & packaging it for shipment. This replaced a blower operated setup that didn’t completely dry the corrugated outside diameter. The Air Wipe not only blew off almost all the water, all the time, but also allowed them to increase production speed by nearly 10%.

The turbulent air flow from the blower system (left) really just beats on the extruded surface, while the laminar flow of the EXAIR Super Air Wipe (right) strips & sweeps the surface clean & dry.

*Once fruit & vegetables are harvested, most of them go through some sort of cleaning process. EXAIR Super Air Knives are commonly used in conjunction with those processes. Sometimes they’re blowing loose dirt from, say, onions or potatoes, so they don’t turn the wash water into a mud bath. They’re also used to blow the wash & rinse water off, so they’re as dry as possible before packaging or processing. One particular customer uses Super Air Knives for the latter. By replacing blowers with a Model 110236SS 36″ Stainless Steel Super Air Knife Kit to dry freshly washed potatoes, they were able to increase the speed of conveyance…the laminar flow from the engineered Air Knife was better at blowing off the potatoes than the turbulent flow from the blower. Also, since the temperature of the Air Knife’s flow is the same as ambient temperature (because they entrain air from their surrounding at a rate of 40:1 to their compressed air consumption), this extended the time before spoilage. The warmer air from the blower (caused by friction in the rotating elements) was fostering the bacterial growth that leads to spoilage.

Increased potato production + longer shelf life = win/win.

Engineered compressed air products are widely used in agriculture (and, of course, many other industries) for their simplicity, durability, and reliability. If you’d like to find out how EXAIR products can make your life (or at least your job) easier, give me a call.

Russ Bowman, CCASS

Application Engineer
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