200Bar gone

[Psymon]

I bought a cylinder of pure argon for tig a couple of weeks ago. It's a Sabre rent free jobbie. I have done about half an hours worth of welding with it. Today I went out to have a little tig on my sculpture and it's gone. Every last bar of pressure... Now when I finish welding I take off the tig and disconnect the gas from the back of the machine. I leave the reg on the cylinder. The gas cylinder was turned off in the shed. There is no way I left the gas leaking out as I would have heard it or felt it. So where the gas has gone is a mystery - unless I left it with a tiny trickle out. Even so I only used it a couple of days ago... So very annoyed that £24 worth of argon has been wasted and even more annoyed that it cut short a nice bit of welding today.

 

[Justme]

I turn of the cylinder & back off the flow rate to zero.

Then if the cylinder valve is slightly leaky as many are you still dont loose any gas as long as your reg to cylinder connection is gas tight.

 

[mike 109444]

I think you may have a very slight leak or as you said you may have left it with a tiny trickle. At several hundred bar any slight leak will bleed away the gas. I use CO2 on my mig and have done so for many years and would get quite lazy leaving the reg turned on with no great if any loss of gas as the CO2 is only at about 5 to 10 bar at the cylinder pressure gauge. I had a bottle of Ar/CO2 mix and was doing small amounts of welding then fabricating lots of time the again small amount of welds. Found gas ran out in no time! not bets pleased. Have put it down to the higher pressure finding ANY leak and or not turning off reg.

 

[Psymon]

I'll probably do that in future as it would have saved my gas. Very annoying just started laying some weld and the tig started strobing and acting really strange. Then when I checked the gas it was showing less that 2L per min. Fill gauge was on zero...

 

[backpurge]

When not in use it is best practice to always turn the cylinder valve off and fully wind out the pressure adjustment screw on the regulator

 

[Jim_gsxr1000]

£24 for 200 BAR cheapest argon in the uk... what size of cylinder ?

 

[Psymon]

10 Litre cylinder 200bar pure argon Sabre Gas from Elmdale welding on Rayleigh weir trading estate. You have to pay for the cylinder, think it's about 80-90 quid for 10 year use then £24 per fill. Yeah it's cheap but still annoying when it leaks away. Next time I will turn off Cylinder, reg and pea shooter reg. I am not going that direction for a refill until Monday

 

[Jim_gsxr1000]

That's... Really cheap for argon, a bumer that its gone but that's half what I pay for a 137BAR fill

 

[Lawnmowerboy]

Bank 'oliday monday?

 

[Psymon]

Oh no, Tuesday is the earliest...

 

[500e]

Don't forget to check for cylinder leak, both at connector & valve spindle

 

[zardoz]

Same thing happened to me this week. Thought i'd had a brainstorm and forgot how to weld overnight, as I'd been doing fine the day before. Then i noticed the multiple craters. Dam! Forgot to turn the gas off properly !!

Bank 'oliday monday?

You mean Double Sunday!

 

[T0rnado69]

10 Litre cylinder 200bar pure argon Sabre Gas from Elmdale welding on Rayleigh weir trading estate.

http://www.elmdalewelding.co.uk/sabre-gas.html

how do you find there gas and do you get 200bar in the cylinders.
i know boc are 230bar. but there yearly rental cost is unreal and the cheek of charging you for collecting the cylinder too.

i know a guy in laindon that got there cylinders and wasnt happy with how much gas they had in them

i was going to move over to them once i empty my current cylinder

i like the way the 10L 10 year right of use is half the price of the 20L cylinder
and same for the gas refills.
so you could get a 10L argon bottle and 10L argon/co2 mix for the same as one 20L bottle.

 

[jonnyBMX]

dont know if this will help or even if this is the best way to do it... but when i connect up my cylinders to my welders i always use warm water with washing up liqiuid in and brush it onto all the connections which makes it very easy to see any leaks

 

[edh]

Elmdale Gas

T0rnado69,

I use Elmdale for Argon supplies for my TIG welder - the bottles are usualy 200-230bar and I've had no problems with them,​

Cheers

 

[brianblock]

Yeah I use Elmdale too