The Cutting Edge: Computing / Technology / Innovation : A 19th-Century Device Is Pneu Again
Electronic mail traffic might be backed up bumper-to-bumper along the information highway, but a handful of companies are finding plenty of room to maneuver in a decidedly old-fashioned conduit: pneumatic tubes.
“Pneumatic tubes are an old technology that’s new again,” said Eric Berge, president of Airlink International in Orange, which manufactures tube systems for commercial and industrial applications. “There are lots of things that you can’t send through e-mail.”
Pneumatic tubes date back more than 100 years, to a time when businesses in Paris and New York moved paperwork between nearby buildings using manually operated bellows to create the needed vacuum. Paris even had a public tube system, enabling anyone who needed to get a letter across town fast to send a “pneu.”
The basic physics of pneumatic tube systems haven’t changed. Motors create a vacuum that pulls canisters through the network of tubes at speeds of up to 30 feet per second. But the old systems were notoriously unreliable and cumbersome to operate, and they offered a ride too bumpy for almost anything other than paper.
Now computers can track shipments to a hundred or more stations, give preferential treatment to rush orders and instantly identify any problems and route traffic around them. Old systems required two tubes to send and retrieve canisters, but reversible motors now make it possible to use a single tube. The new systems have braking mechanisms and thus can safely transport not only paper and money but also aircraft parts, blood samples and other things.
Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico uses a tube system to carry irradiated materials to a testing laboratory. United Airlines plans to use a 7,100-foot tube system to shuttle 40-pound aircraft parts to passenger gates when Denver’s new airport opens.
Long Beach Memorial Medical Center is using tubes to move specimens to a central laboratory in the basement and drugs from its pharmacy. “We had tube stations 15 years ago, but they were so unreliable that we just abandoned them,” pathology department director Terry White said.
The tube industry now generates slightly less than $100 million in annual revenue, up from about $45 million a decade ago.
New Spin on an Old Idea
Pneumatic tubing systems use air to route delivery carriers from point to point within a building. Developed over a century ago, the original systems were pumped with a large bellows. New systems, like those manufactured by Orange-based Airlink International, use reversible motors, computer and electronic sensors.
How It Works:
1. Sender fills carrier with item to be sent--such as cash, paperwork or aircraft parts--and place inside station door.
2. Sender selects station destination.
Send-receive station: Light panel indicates whether network is free for sending. Red light means sender must wait until incoming carrier arrives before sending.
Blower: Motor blows air or creates suction for two-way travel.
Diverters: route carrier to proper destination and can hold carriers to allow priority deliveries.
Carrier: Carrier moves 25-30 feet per second.
Electronic sensors: Tell computer where carrier is within system.
Air bleed-off valve: Located near send/receive station. Reduces air pressure to slow carrier down before landing.
3. Carrier makes a soft landing at receiving station.
Computer: Tracks carriers, monitors air pressure.
Source: Airlink International; Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times
