Innovative Company Needs Innovative Air Solutions

This year we are periodically featuring customer stories that shed light on the diverse industries that make use of compressed air.

Meet Janicki Industries, a full-service engineering company specializing in the design and manufacturing of large scale, high precision composite projects and tooling for customers in aerospace, marine, wind energy and transportation. This company handles projects like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Boeing 787, the Las Vegas Monorail, NASA vehicles, experimental windmill blades, and the list goes on.

When a successful, technology driven business that makes much of its own equipment purchases outside equipment, its expectations are high. Janicki Industries looks for like-minded companies that invest in research and development and can provide innovative products that help them develop their own innovative products.

Janicki Industries uses compressed air for a diverse range of operations including pneumatic tools, operating systems on a mill, and purging air in control cabinets. But, most interesting by far is the use of air bearing pallets that allow one person to move a 40,000-pound load across the floor. With the air bearings located on each of the four corners of the pallet, house air is pumped into a perforated membrane, and the load just floats on the floor. Now, that’s pretty cool.

Because Janicki Industries does not do assembly line work, it is difficult to predict how much air will be needed on a day-to-day basis. So, when selecting air compressors, they chose Variable Speed Drive (VSD) compressors that vary the output of air based on demand. They recently replaced an old compressor with an Atlas Copco GA 75 VSD, which uses 35% less power than a fixed drive compressor used for the same applications. And when energy accounts for 75% of a compressor’s total lifetime cost, a VSD compressor provides a superior return on investment. And, that’s really smart.

Do you have your own compressed air challenges? Contact us for more information about how you can use compressed air in your manufacturing operation.