Maintaining an efficient and safe industrial facility is no small feat. From keeping electronics cool to ensuring employee comfort and safety, every aspect of facility maintenance is vital. This is where Vortec maintenance solutions can help. Vortec offers a comprehensive range of compressed air maintenance solutions designed to streamline operations and enhance safety. In this blog post, we will delve into the key offerings of Vortec maintenance solutions and how they benefit your facility.

Air nozzles are an essential tool in many manufacturing processes. They are designed to provide efficient and effective blow off and cooling of parts, saving time, and reducing costs. In this blog post, we will discuss the benefits of air nozzles, including their ability to save time with better blow off capability, provide up to 25 times blow off power, reduce operating costs, reduce noise levels, achieve blow off in tight spaces, better positioning with flexible nozzles, and quickly cool parts in manufacturing processes.

Thermal testing has proven that natural convection cooling is not adequate for today’s smaller, high power density enclosures. Heat dissipation by forced convection (fan cooling) is the most frequently used method of cooling. Forced air-cooling systems can provide heat transfer rates that are ten times greater than those achievable with natural convection and radiation, but even this is not adequate to cool faster electronic components when they are located in hostile plant environments.

All manufacturing facilities have downtime, the time when a machine or production line is not creating any output.  The goal is to minimize the unplanned downtime, while maximizing the efficiency of the planned downtime.  Let’s take a look at each type of downtime. 

A large domestic component repair facility that specializes in re-building and testing hydraulic, electro-mechanical and fuel system components for the aerospace and aviation industries needed a solution to cool a fuel control valve for one of their customers. The control valve must accurately regulate fuel flow in response to the temperature. One of the tests required the valve to be cooled to -25°F plus or minus 2°, and the fuel flow measured.

Cold Air Guns and vortex tubes are popular spot cooling products that are used in a wide variety of applications, ranging from cooling cutting tools such as band saw and circular saw blades, router bits, lathe tools, HSS drills and milling cutters used for machining of metals, plastics, paper and wood. They are also commonly used to cool parts, dehumidify gas samples, cool sensors, test thermostats and many other applications where an instant and reliable supply of clean cold air is required. Vortex tubes and Cold Air Guns have no moving parts and use only a clean dry source of compressed air for creating cooling capacities up to 6000 btuh (1758 watts).

A great article by Eli Plaskett, from Modern Machine Shop, showing the versatility and effectiveness of our Vortex Tubes. There are some great tips on how to make the most out of your compressed air solution. 
This technology offers an alternative to traditional liquid coolants by providing a clean stream of air as cold as -30°F to cool cutters and workpieces during machining.

Vortec recently received a call from one of our loyal customers inquiring about our vortex tubes. They were curious to see how long vortex tubes lasted before they should consider replacing them. Naturally, this peaked my interest, “Well hypothetically they should last forever if they are properly maintained. Why, how long have you had one?” Turns out, they have had one of our vortex tubes for over 45 years! Mind you, we were founded in 1961 (56 years ago) so this wasn’t the first vortex tube we ever built, but it’s not far off.