When The Obvious Answer, Isn’t

Certain EXAIR products are designed for specific applications. We’ll still get calls from folks who want to use them in situations different than what they’re intended. For instance:

*Reversible Drum Vacs for use with volatile liquids. Due to the very real risk of ignition, we do not specify our Industrial Vacuums for use with flammables. This is a case where we can’t help, but we do know some suppliers of suitable equipment for these situations.

*Cabinet Cooler Systems for anything but a totally enclosed electrical cabinet. Oftentimes, these alternate applications are really just in need of a reliable, consistent source of cold air, which can be more properly addressed with a Cold Gun, Adjustable Spot Cooler or Mini Cooler.

*Speaking of those particular Spot Cooling Products, we’re able to help many callers who inquire about these by simply pointing them in the direction of a Vortex Tube: they’re lightweight, compact, and with standard NPT connections for compressed air supply, cold flow, and hot exhaust, you can hook them up to darn near anything you want.

A broad range of products, each with a broad range of applications!

Like the Vortex Tubes, a good many of our products’ designs afford adaptability to a wide range of uses. I submit, for your reading pleasure, these two wildly different Line Vac applications:

*A manufacturer of electrical connector devices needed to move small parts from a mass production line to their assembly area. A Model 6084 2” Aluminum Line Vac and our 6934-20 2” Clear Reinforced PVC Conveyance Hose (20ft Length) was purchased and installed. They operate it as needed to empty the production bin and fill the assembly bin; simple as that. This is a “textbook” job for a Line Vac.

*A service company that specializes in large compressors & engines was looking for a compact & mobile device to evacuate exhaust gases. This is normally where we start talking about Air Amplifiers (and we did) but their calculations called for more suction head than the Air Amplifiers will generate. Their calculations were right, and they’re putting Model 6060 ¾” Stainless Steel Line Vacs on all their service trucks. So, a “textbook” job for an Air Amplifier was actually a better fit for the Line Vac.

And speaking of “textbook” applications that take unexpected turns, another caller needed help with a “pick and place” operation that he’d purchased a small E-Vac Vacuum Generator and Vacuum Cup for. He needed to move these small media filters, one at a time, from a stack, into their product. Try as they might, they could NOT pick up just one of these pieces from the stack, which was about 3” in diameter, and about the consistency of a coffee filter….which was exactly what I used to replicate the application in the Efficiency Lab. I couldn’t just pick one up with the E-Vac either, so I tried to just use the open suction end of a Line Vac – even with the compressed air supply valve cracked open as low as I could manage, it still wanted to pick up 2 or 3 at a time. We’ve got one other product that generates a vacuum, and, crazy as it sounds, I attempted to apply our Air Amplifier in a pick-and-place situation. And it worked: with the supply valve cracked open (it wasn’t even registering flow to the smallest division on our rotameter flow meter,) the Model 120020 ¾” Super Air Amplifier was able to consistently pick up one (and only one) coffee filter at a time. So our “textbook” job for an E-Vac was solved by an Air Amplifier.

Sometimes, what seems to be the obvious solution, isn’t. With a little discussion, and possibly experimentation, though, the right answer will generally reveal itself. If you think this might be where you’re at with your application, give us a call. I can’t wait to see what happens!

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
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