The students in the drafting classes at Davie County High School (DCHS) are constantly creating, tinkering, and innovating. Driven by the desire to identify and solve problems, their product solutions are utilized in their own lives and other DCHS classrooms as well as – in some cases – helping to improve and streamline local manufacturing business operations.

How do you know when you need a new exhaust system?

One such example is the case of drafting student Jaydon Leonard, who was working on an internship at Avgol, a nonwoven fabrics manufacturer. When he noticed that the company needed to use both a pipe clamp and an insert in order to secure the Advanced Exhaust Solutions Davie tubing on the slitter, he reverse-engineered a new coupling piece for their pipes that eliminated the need for those two components, resulting in a cost savings for the firm as well as cutting down on the time it took to place an order with Italy, where the coupling was originally manufactured.

Another example is the case of hospital grade disk silencers designed to operate in conjunction with acoustic/thermally lined outlet pipe extensions at Avgol’s facility. These advanced silencers required attenuating raw exhaust sound pressure levels to less than 80 dB(A) at one meter and were required to have a low restriction design with a minimal footprint. To meet this requirement, Advanced Exhaust Solutions engineered a class 7 rectangular silencer that, in the words of the customer, “easily met the specification”. The silencer was also designed with an integral lifting eye to accommodate 1000 lb. of equipment for ease of maintenance.