Smooth
operators
Times Food Processing Journal profiles three innovative
and easy-to-use products
Silent Air Knife
Raico Engineers offers Silent Air Knife that
sets a new gold standard in air knife curtain
blow-off technology. The product is made of
coated aluminum and stainless steel, which
can help to reduce noise levels by almost 10
per cent and air consumption by almost 40-90
per cent, by replacing drilled pipe and open
jets. The Silent Air Knife produces a 'laminar'
flow of air along its length using the 'Coanda'
effect. This 'entrains' a large volume of air
from the surrounding area along with the
small amount of compressed air from the
Silent Air Knife to produce and output flow
up to 30 times. In fact, payback on
compressed air savings can be experienced in
just a few weeks' time in some applications.
Features
The Silent Air Knife is made of a coated
aluminum body and a hard-anodised 'cap'.
Further, stainless steel models are available for
high temperature and corrosive applications.
This easy to mount Silent Air Knife comes
with a mounting facility at the back in a
compact design. Moreover, airflow
amplification is approximately 40:1 as
compared to 3:l for drilled pipe or open jets
and tubes. Instant on-off with no moving parts,
no electricity or explosion hazard is yet another
striking feature of the Silent Air Knife.
Benefits
The Silent Air Knife has a longer life in
difficult environments as compared to other
models. It is easy to fit in small places and
helps in noise reductions to 15 dbA.
Moreover, the product helps to reduce energy
in compressed air use up to almost 90 per
cent. What's more, the product is
maintenance-free, safe to use and comes with
easy-output control feature. The typical
applications of Silent Air Knife replace drilled
pipe or rows of nozzles used for blow-off,
cleaning, drying or cooling. Following are the
different application areas of Silent Air Knife:
• Automotives: To remove water, coolant,
dust and scrap in parts manufacturing and in
assembly operations. Can be used to cool
parts.
• Bottling: To blow off water prior to
labelling, palletising or packaging. Can be
used for moving light materials and opening
and closing packaging lids or tops.
• Chemicals: To blow off chemicals or water
prior to labelling or packaging as with bottling
operations.
• Food: To remove water from product or
packaging and for control application of some
materials to the food product such as sugar,
icing and so on. Can be used to open pouches
in bagging operations and to dry food.
• General Manufacturing: Can be used for
part ejection, air curtain barrier and dust and
liquid blow-off from all types of parts. ldeal for
replacing fans in some cooling operations.
• Metals: Coolant and other liquid removal
on process lines from aluminum, steel, brass
or other materials. Can be used for dry metals
prior to other operation such as plating or
polishing and cooling metal parts prior to
coating or painting.
• Paper and Lumber: Can be used for paper
dust removal and control and dust removal
from plywood and panel board.
• Plastics: Can be used for dust and scrap
blow-off and to cool off molten plastic in dip
molding.
• Printing: Can be used for cooling to set
some inks, scrap blow-off, hold down labels
prior to printing and to cool adhesives to
allow faster speeds in label applications and
binding operations.
• Pharmaceuticals: To remove liquid prior
to labelling or packaging waste removal from
solid materials.
• Textiles: For cleaning and drying of cloth
or other materials.
