News

End energy wastage at machine points

21-02-06

For those of you still using outdated manual dampers for contaminant collection on machines, how often does your operator forget to activate it when the machine is not in use?

We suspect it is quite often. Not that this suggests your employees are underskilled, it more an indication of how easy it is to overlook the minor tasks in today’s dynamic production plant.

For this reason we have introduced a high quality pneumatic blast gate for ducted extraction systems that closes when power to its machine is switched off.

And we can do this for less than half the price of any similar products from our competitors!

It is linked electronically to the controller of an overall ducting system, and when fitted to each machine collection point it activates activate the moment a machine is switched off so as to regulate pressure and velocity through the ducting to provide several cost benefits.

Firstly, this lowers unnecessary load on the filter by maintaining a constant design pressure drop across the dust collector filter media.

Secondly, because the blast gate stops what is essentially a wasted extraction action on a machine that is switched off, the system experiences overall correct conveying velocities.

And thirdly, hood face velocity is optimised (this is the capture velocity at collection hoods).

According to Eximo’s Marketing Manager, Mr Morris Short, the overall power consumption is kept down to a minimum.

In almost all cases, when a new dust extraction system is proposed, the customer normally specifies that the system be designed large enough to cater for the situation where all machines producing a contaminant are operating at the same time, plus he or she allows for addition of new machines as the business grows.

But because all machines are rarely operating simultaneously, that is seldom the case. But the complete system solution is chosen anyway to allow some reserve for expansion.

With Eximo pneumatic blast gates in place on machine ducting systems, it is assured that when a machine shuts down less air would flow through the system to reduce load on the filter media and lower the relative power consumption at the same time.

Until now, most ducting designers have been fitting manually operated dampers to machines and the operators rarely remember to close them when the production machine is shut down while the rest of the system remains in operation.

Obviously, fitting a pneumatically operated blast gate to the machine overcomes the problem as it closes automatically when linked electrically to the machine’s on/of switch.

Suppose you looked at the idea of only supplying dust extraction to those machines that match the number of employees the customer has working on the shop floor.

Look how much further that can take you: smaller dust collector, maintenance of constant pressure drop across filter media, lower power consumption, guaranteed design hood face velocity at all times.

And then we have the situation where the customer calls you months and sometimes years after the system was installed saying that another new machine has been added to the already fully loaded system.

But with cost being an issue, spending on additional capacity to the system is not desired.

Pneumatic blast gates are a safe solution in this instance. It is fitted to the new machine unless they are operating continuously and it can also be easily retrofitted to selected existing machines to positively close off when required.

The only alternative is to reduce capture velocity at all system hoods, increase flow rate through the filter media and consequently increase pressure drop and power consumption.

The Eximo pneumatic blast gate will overcome all these potential money-wasting problems safely and surely.