AngelAire Release Urn

When the cremated remains he was scattering ended up dropping in clumps on his shoes, Scotty Crandlemire knew he needed to invent a better way to disperse ashes at a memorial service.

After that negative memorial experience, he created an answer to the problem: AngelAire release urns.

“As with most inventions, necessity is the mother of invention,” said Crandlemire at his booth at the ICCFA expo. “I had a bad experience scattering ashes…. I had a vision to create an urn that does it in an ethereal way, to automatically project the remains up and away from the participants.”

The release urn creates a beautiful, majestic spray of remains over the course of two and a half minutes. He and his partner Jim Thorpe found that a one minute dispersal was too forceful to be graceful, and at four minutes “people were getting impatient and looking at their watches.”

The unit comes with a wind tester, so attendees know where to stand to avoid being covered by windblown cremated remains. It’s important to avoid positioning the crowd downwind!

The patented release urn is comprised of a decorative box, with a funnel hopper inside that channels the ashes through a hole in the urn’s side. The scattering action is powered by a drill-based motor drive powered by a rechargeable 18-volt battery. The 15-pound unit can be wiped down, recharged and re-used many times.

Each AngelAire release urn comes in a variety of finishes. A decorative overlay, which can be personalized with written wishes from loved ones, can be framed and given to the family as a keepsake.

“We have found that memorialization is big in this industry,” said Crandlemire. “What is special to the family? Perhaps it’s a golf theme.” On display at the booth were models with floral, golf and hunting themes.

AngelAire is selling and leasing models to funeral homes for multiple uses, and renting models to the general public on a weekly basis. You can see a video of the release urn in action through their website, www.AngelAire.com.