I recently had the pleasure of discussing Safety Air Gun performance with the Safety Director of a manufacturing facility who needed to address the high noise levels in their machine shop. They were using inexpensive thumb trigger blow offs:
It’s important to note that handheld blow off devices are RARELY operated continuously, but even in short bursts, excessively high noise levels like that (even if they’re technically within OSHA limits) aren’t a lot of fun to be around, and Safety Directors aren’t the kind of folks who are typically OK with operating right at a published limit. I know EXAIR’s Safety Director isn’t, and neither is this company’s.
After discussing the specifics of what they use these for, we determined that two specific EXAIR Safety Air Guns would meet their machinists’ needs at different machines: Model 1699-CS VariBlast Compact Safety Air Gun with our Mini Super Air Nozzle & Chip Shield, and Model 1809-PEEK-CS VariBlast Precision Safety Air Gun with our Pico Super Air Nozzle (PEEK thermoplastic for non-marring performance in case of incidental contact with the parts they’re blowing off) & Chip Shield.
The sound level of the Mini Super Air Nozzle on the Model 1699-CS is only 71dBA, and Pico Super Air Nozzle on the Model 1809-PEEK-CS is only 68dBA. Those sound levels are barely discernible in a typical machine shop during normal operation…and FAR less than OSHA’s limits, in any case.
In addition to the sound level reduction, the compressed air consumption was greatly reduced as well. Their device was tested in our Efficiency Lab, and uses 22.3 SCFM @80psig. The air consumption of the Model 1699-CS is only 10 SCFM @80psig, and Model 1809-PEEK-CS uses only 4.9 SCFM @80psig.
The additional benefit of the operators being able to control the flow & force by the variable flow trigger will almost certainly reduce ALL of those values as muscle memory ‘fine tunes’ the amount of pull they apply to the trigger. I think that qualifies for a win-win-win, any day.
If you use air guns in your facility, and they’re not EXAIR Safety Air Guns, you owe it to yourself – and your electric bill & your co-workers’ hearing – to check us out.
Russ Bowman, CCASS
Application Engineer
Visit us on the Web
Follow me on Twitter
Like us on Facebook