More Power May Not Be The Solution

I can’t tell you how much it pains me to write this after last week’s blog. But, if we’re being honest here, every Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor (“More Power!”) does indeed need an Al Borland (“I don’t think so, Tim.”) As evidence of this, I had an opportunity to provide reasoned advice to a caller on the tech support line this week:

They had just purchased a Model 110224 24″ Aluminum Super Air Knife Kit. The flow it produced wasn’t powerful enough for their needs, so they installed extra shims from the Shim Set (which comes with the Kit) – increasing the shim gap to 0.009″ (which can produce a great deal more air flow and force)…more power, right?

Super Air Knife Kits include a Shim Set, Filter Separator, and Pressure Regulator.

Unfortunately, not. The Super Air Knife makes a hard hitting curtain of air when supplied properly…but it’s going to need a 1/2″ pipe (ID of ~5/8″) to carry enough compressed air flow to make that happen. Turns out, they were using 1/4″ tubing, which wasn’t even getting enough compressed air flow to the unit with just the 0.002″ shim installed. Putting in the extra shims actually made that worse. Once they ran a 3/4″ hose to the Air Knife (and took out those extra shims,) they were actually able to regulate the air supply back to about 60psig, which provided a strong enough air flow to solve the application.

This table comes directly from the Installation & Operation Instructions for the Super Air Knife.

Sometimes, though, compressed air product applications DO come down to a need for more power.  Next week, I’ll tell you about a caller who said he needed “the biggest and most powerful” Safety Air Gun we had – and unlike the last time I wrote a blog about that – he was RIGHT.

Russ Bowman
Application Engineer
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