How To Detect an Air Leak in Your Pneumatic System

Hello, my name is Chad Kauffman and I’ve been in the pneumatics industry for nearly 20 years. Over those years I’ve literally been in thousands of different plants and a common problem that we see in almost every plant, some people recognize it but most don’t, are leaks in your air system.

The reason that is important is there’s substantial cost associated with those air leaks. Rising costs globally for energy has really put pressure on maintenance staffs and production facilities to reduce their energy costs. One way to do that is to get a really good handle on your air leaks and your air system. There are factories out there with literally thousands and thousands of feet of tubing and for you to identify where those air leaks are at and get them corrected is not only vitally important to your bottom line, it’s something that we need to help you find a solution for.

There have been several studies done by the leading pneumatic manufacturers in the industry, and what those have shown us is that on average about 20% of a compressor’s output air is lost due to air leaks in an average factory. So you can imagine how much that adds up to each year. As an example, a 200 horsepower compressor that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year can cost in excess of 14 thousand dollars per year in energy costs. So, it’s a very substantial problem that everyone needs to be aware of and we’ve got some solutions to help you resolve that issue.

There are many factors that contribute to leaks. They can be small pinhole leaks which are tough to identify, again when you’ve got a hundred thousand square foot facility with thousands of feet of tubing. There are mis-sized components, loose fitting, poor seals, various reasons for leaks. Not all are easily identified. If it’s a major leak you’ll hear a hissing sound, but if it’s a small leak, which most of them are, they are very tough to identify. So we have an interesting product called an ALDS made by SMC.

ALDS stands for Automatic Leak Detection System and it is a box we can mount on an OEM piece of equipment. We can mount it inline on your air system and it measures the airflow going through tubing; the pressure drops and rises and it gives you a signal back that tells you if you have an air leak problem. On certain systems when it’s applied on a piece of OEM equipment with a software package, it can actually not only tell you that you have a leak, but identify where that leak is. This can become very valuable and save a substantial amount of dollars.

It’s a great solution for OEMs as an upsellto the customers and end users for a huge cost savings on your energy costs each and every year. For more information on the ALDS you can visit www.innovativeidm.com touch the knowledge tab and we would be happy to help you out. After all we are Home of the Legendary Customer Experience.