A manufacturing engineer, at a large diesel engine manufacturer, called me looking for a cooling solution. They needed to speed up cooling of a hot 3” diameter cam gear that is a shrink fit onto the engine’s crankshaft. They were using four cold air guns from a competitor of ours to cool the gear and they needed a solution that would allow them to increase the cooling capacity, quickly adjust the cold air temperature and reduce the cooling cycle time.

In order to meet the engineer’s specific requirements, I recommended four of Vortec’s model 620-1 Adjustable Cold Air Guns to replace the competitor’s units. This specific model of Cold Air Gun produced more cooling capacity, at 25 scfm/1500 btuh, while the competitors only produced 15 scfm/900 btuh. This, along with the ability to adjust the temperature as needed, would be the best solution to solve all three of their assembly problems.

The following day, the manufacturing engineer made the long drive to our facility to test out the Cold Air Guns, in the hope that they could be installed the next day during a holiday shutdown. After testing them, the engineer knew that a simple and easy modification to the mounting configuration on their equipment, and the Vortec Adjustable Cold Air Guns could be quickly installed.

After purchasing the four Cold Air Guns the engineer headed back to the diesel engine manufacturing plant to install the Cold Air Guns before resuming full scale production the next day. The manufacturing engineer said they worked great and the 620-1 Adjustable Cold Air Guns were cycled on and off, to match the cycle time of crankshaft assembly line, via a PLC control. This allowed them to increase savings and efficiency on the line to ensure productivity is continually met. The manufacturing engineer stated that the Vortec Adjustable Cold Air Guns were the perfect solution to their problems and they would be purchasing additional Cold Air Guns for similar applications issues they were having on the line.