Pneumatics

Improving the Efficiency of Pumping Systems through Pump System Optimization

By Matthew Derner, Manager, Business Development, Pump System Programs, The Hydraulic Institute

The U.S. Department of Energy’s 2002 Motor Market Assessment established that pumping systems offer the greatest optimization potential of all types of fluid systems, with potential savings up to 75% and an average net savings of 20.1%. In this article, The Hydraulic Institute defines the steps for a pump system optimization.

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Pneumatics and Vacuum Generators Power Robotics at Automate 2025

By Troy Dreier, Senior Editor, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Automate 2025, showed attendees how to make their industrial plants more efficient with robotics. Throughout the conference, robotic arms shuttled packages, burgers and even macarons with speed and accuracy. Driving this new technology was a complex network of pneumatic cylinders and pick-and-place automation powered by pneumatic vacuum generation. Innovation makes these proven technologies more efficient than ever.
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Cardinal Glass Increases Throughput with Dry Compressed Air

By Troy Dreier, Senior Editor, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

With over 49 locations and 10,000 employees, the company’s Casa Grande, AZ, plant specializes in tempering, taking annealed or raw glass, cutting it to size, running it through a 1,250°F (677°C) oven and then using a pressurized air system to quench the glass and turn it into safety glass. Compressed air powers the plant’s belt systems that transfer materials, the seaming system that rounds the corners and the washer system that cleans particulates off glass before it goes into the furnace.
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Sizing Air Compressors for Spray Finishing

By Shane Vrankin, Service Consultant, C.H. Reed

Achieving a high-quality finish on a coated product, whether it’s painted or powder coated, is dependent on a variety of variables that impact coating quality before material ever comes out of a spray gun. For example, it’s essential to have the proper paint agitators, paint pumps, spray guns, hoses, line sizes and pump cycle rates. But an even bigger requirement is a properly sized compressed air system to effectively operate the pneumatic painting and powder coating equipment. 
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Achieving Precise Powder Coating Control and Greater Productivity

By Sumit Kapde, Global Business Development Manager, Robotics and Proportional Valves, Emerson

When building powder coating solutions, it can be a challenge to optimize compressed airflow with minimum reaction time. Without this level of control, the coating thickness may not be uniform and transfer efficiency – the amount of powder adhering to the object being sprayed – may be low. The resulting overspray can waste powder material. The control of a powder coating machine — and the quality and efficiency of the application — depends on the performance of the valve block.
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Air Cannon Innovations in Preheater Towers

By Brad Pronschinske, Director of Air Cannons Business Group, Martin Engineering

An essential part of the cement production process is the consistent flow of bulk materials, as poor material flow can put a stranglehold on a plant’s profitability. Accumulations in storage systems and process vessels can choke material movement, causing bottlenecks that create expensive obstacles to equipment performance and process efficiency. Poor material flow also raises maintenance expenses, diverting manpower from core activities. If they become severe enough, flow problems can bring production to a complete stop. 
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Improve Process Efficiency and Reduce Energy Use with Compressed Air Monitoring

By Hendrik Priemer, Product Manager IIoT Applications, Machine Automation, Emerson 

Without compressed air monitoring, up to 30% of the compressed air generated goes to waste. This waste occurs for several reasons, including leaks caused by failures at joints and tubes, exposure to vibration and normal component wear, and the suboptimization of machines and devices. Continuous monitoring capabilities allow operators to detect leaks and other anomalies in their early stages. By addressing pneumatic issues before they can grow, companies can reduce compressed air use by 20% to 30%.  
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Food Safety Design Tips for Pneumatic Systems

By Steve Bain, Industry Segment Manager Food & Beverage, Festo US

Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs) under FSMA CFR Title 21 117.40 is the cornerstone of this food safety effort. Title 21 details the cleanability and cross contamination standards that plants must meet so that food is deemed safe. The following are tips for updating existing pneumatic systems in food and packaging and what to look for when purchasing new systems. 
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Smart Pneumatics Play Big Role in Meeting Industrial Sustainability Goals

By Robert Brezni, Global Account Management, EMERSON Discrete Automation

Pneumatics and the generation of compressed air accounts for about 10% of a typical facility's energy consumption. That number could be much lower, but because of leaks and poor air pressure regulation, a surprising amount of energy is wasted in the process. Yet, most manufacturers are not taking full advantage of smart pneumatic technologies or data analytics to improve energy efficiency. By installing connected pneumatic solutions in their plants, manufacturers can continuously collect critical data to understand where energy is being wasted and make informed decisions to optimize energy consumption. 
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Improving Sustainability Through Compressed Air and Utilities Monitoring


By Dr. Michael Britzger, Senior Manager, IIoT Engineering & Innovation, and Nils Beckmann, Global Director Engineering Intelligent Automation & Solutions for EMERSON Machine Automation 

Utilities monitoring paired with machine learning models can reliably predict anomalies, prompting action that can prevent waste and optimize resource use. 
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Five Decades of Innovation at Festo USA

By Roderick Smith, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

The history of Festo began in 1925 in Germany. Festo USA was founded on March 15th, 1972 in Port Washington on Long Island, with the focus of being a full-line supplier of pneumatics – a focus we continue with today.
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SMC Innovates Pneumatic Solutions for Sustainable Automation

By Mike Grennier, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

Headquartered in Noblesville, Indiana, SMC Corporation of America has grown exponentially since the company began operations in the United States in 1977. Today, the Noblesville campus occupies 345 acres and encompasses 2.6 million square feet of manufacturing and warehouse space. 
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Achieving Sustainability Targets by Optimizing Compressed Air Use

By Jan Edler, IIoT Manufacturing Applications Leader, Emerson, and Michael Britzger, Senior Manager IIoT Engineering & Innovation, Emerson

By monitoring compressed air consumption using smart pneumatic sensors, companies can reliably reduce energy use and emissions.  The digital transformation of pneumatic systems is one critical way that companies can improve operational sustainability. Advanced airflow-sensing technology provides compressed air monitoring and valuable insights that allow companies to control and significantly reduce the energy used to produce compressed air as well as related carbon emissions.
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Three Ways To Make Packaging Lines More Sustainable

By Emerson

Sustainability is a high priority for today’s consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. Driven by environmental responsibility, government regulations and customer preferences, CPGs are actively seeking ways to decarbonize their packaging lines and use eco-friendly packaging materials. Many have started monitoring the energy consumption of their equipment in real time and upgraded critical areas of their packaging processes using two key technologies: pneumatics and ultrasonic welding. 
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Solving Predictive Maintenance and Sustainability Challenges Through Digital Transformation

By Amit Patel, Marketing Manager, Digital Transformation – Industrial Automation, Emerson

The industrial internet of things (IIoT) and industry 4.0 have digitally transformed the way facilities operate, enabling processes that are smarter and more efficient than ever before. But digital transformation is still new to some and may seem abstract or ambiguous. In actuality, it’s quite the opposite.
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Three Real-World Applications for Pneumatics and IIoT

By Enrico De Carolis, Emerson

Industrial operations and manufacturers using pneumatics have access to more Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology than ever before, from position sensors on cylinders to system flow sensors and edge gateways that operate independently from the machine controller with globally accepted communication protocols.
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Smart Monitoring: The Power Behind Pneumatics Productivity

By Emerson and Motion Industries

In manufacturing and packaging facilities that rely on pneumatics, there’s a four-letter word worse than virtually any other: leak. Unidentified air leakage and unexpected maintenance in pneumatic systems are significant sources of revenue and productivity loss but identifying the cause of leakages and preventing unforeseen downtime is typically a challenge.
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Unilever Ice Cream Plant Reduces Compressed Air Consumption with Pneumatic Energy Efficiency Module

By Randy DeForge, Festo

Electricity and compressed air play an important role in the thermal and kinetic processes for everything from mixing and extruding the ingredients, deep-freezing to -13°F (-25°C), dipping into various chocolate coatings through to final packaging. Energy efficiency is therefore right at the top of Unilever’s list of priorities. As part of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, this global corporation has succeeded in saving more than \$186 million in energy costs from efficiency improvements in production alone since 2008.
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SHOW REPORT: The 2019 Best Practices EXPO & Conference – Another Success!

By Mike Grennier, Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine

The event brought together technology experts, systems assessment professionals, and manufacturing leaders – all of whom shared best practices and ideas manufacturing plants can use to save energy, improve sustainability initiatives and increase the overall reliability and quality of on-site utilities.
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Standardization of Automation Components Pays Off at New Biotest AG Plasma Fractionation Plant

By Ralf Baumann

Blood plasma is an indispensable resource in the production of life-saving medicines. It is also in high demand on global markets. To make more efficient use of this valuable commodity, Biotest AG developed a new large-scale production plant in Dreieich, Germany, for plasma fractionation capable of obtaining five instead of the previous three products from a single liter of blood plasma. As part of its strategy, Biotest AG worked with Festo to standardize automation components used at the plant, resulting in simplified installation and maintenance.
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Understanding and Treating an Industrial Static Problem

By Daniel Rebennack, SMC

In this article, we discuss problems associated with static electricity in industrial manufacturing operations and how to effectively address them. At the atomic level, materials have a balance of positively charged protons in the nucleus and negatively charged electrons in the shell. Balance requires the same number of each.  A static charge occurs when that balance shifts due to the loss or gain of one or more electrons from the atom or molecule. The primary mechanism for this loss or gain, among several possibilities, is friction.
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How to Keep Reverse Pulse Dust Collectors Operating Efficiently and Reliably

By Ron Marshall, Marshall Compressed Air Consulting

Reverse pulse type dust collectors often represent a challenge to compressed air energy efficiency, and sometimes throw a wrench into the works by causing huge air pressure fluctuations, high transient flows and just plain large leaks. This article discusses this type of dust collector, often installed in food processing plants, and gives some real-life examples of problematic installations. Some suggested measures are mentioned to ensure your dust collectors keep running in a trouble-free manner.
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Don’t Overlook Tubing Volume with Manifold-Mounted Pneumatic Valves To Conserve Energy

By John Martin, SMC Corporation of America

The advent of manifold-mounted, plug-in pneumatic valves has been a boon for machine builders. It allows them to mount complete valve packages in a safe and secure location on a machine. Using a D-sub connector, serial interface module, or similar single-point wiring system, all of the electrical control outputs can feed into one location on the manifold, greatly simplifying the wiring.
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Pneumatics Boost Productivity of Doroti Pack Thermoforming Machine

By Daniel Math, Aventics

For more than 20 years, Hungarian-based Doroti Pack Ltd. has specialized in the production and servicing of state-of-the-art packaging machines. Their focus is on developing, manufacturing, producing and selling premium-quality packaging equipment, including their line of DorPack thermoforming machines which are often used for food products such as fresh meat, fish, dairy products, bakery ware, confectionery and ready-cooked foods. Dorati Pack chose to incorporate Aventics pneumatic components in latest thermoforming machine for optimal productivity and machine longevity.
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