Cooling Large Industrial Parts in 60 seconds How do you take large industrial equipment from 350 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit in under 60 seconds? This was the challenge faced by Anderson Machine Manufacturing, a Richmond, VA-based company which builds custom machines for a broad spectrum of industries and applications. In 2009, one of their clients, a multinational corporation, sought Anderson Machine’s aid in creating a machine to compress and cool the components of an industrial-size gearbox shaft. The client wanted extremely rapid cooling, so top of the line air equipment was a necessity. Since the components of the machine had to remain dry, mist cooling was not an option. Todd Anderson, Vice President and Mechanical Engineer at Anderson Machine, explains that “as a mechanical engineer, you know to do what you’re good at and find the best experts you can for other areas. We knew that in this case, meeting the client’s requirements meant finding an extremely high level of expertise in air technology.” After learning about Vortec online, Anderson explained the machine his client sought. Vortec engineers analyzed the specifications Anderson provided and developed a solution. “Building as many different machines as we do, I deal with a lot of different vendors,” Anderson states. “With Vortec, they hit the ground running, grasping our needs right away instead of needing to have things explained to them twice. We told them how big the assembly was, what materials were involved and the timeframe. They performed the heat load calculations to determine which products would work, then sent a spreadsheet showing the products with the right cooling capacity.” By using four of Vortec’s model 610 Cold Air Guns, Anderson was able to deliver a machine which cooled the equipment quickly, meeting the client’s requirements. Vortec, an ITW Company 10125 Carver Road Cincinnati, OH 45242

Cooling Large Industrial Parts in 60 seconds Success breeds new challenges. Anderson’s clients were so pleased with the initial machine, that they requested a more advanced version. They wanted a machine capable of handling much larger pieces of equipment then their initial specifications had required. Anderson turned to Vortec for assistance in enhancing the design of the original machine to handle these new requirements. Vortec’s engineers realized that, although the Cold Air Guns effectively cooled smaller equipment, a twostage cooling process was necessary to bring down the temperature of...