Air Knife - Types and Applications

Types and Applications

The most common use of air knives is to contain or remove free-standing materials (liquids or solids) from the surface of material. The applications include drying bottles and cans after filling and rinsing, printed circuit boards following the conveyorized wash to remove solder paste and flux, metals castings after automatic machining and many more. They can also deliver heated or cooled air to a surface, or create an invisible air barrier to separate heated or cooled environments from one another in industrial applications such as continuous metal heat treating ovens, cold process or storage areas in food processing or dust containment for the entrance to clean rooms.

There is a variety of uses for air knives in many different industries, applications and environments. The invisible high velocity air streams can be discharged by air knife designs of numerous shapes and sizes. These range from “garage built” devices with a low level of precision to the most exotic metals of construction used in air knives for class 100 clean rooms.