Argon gas usage - first question; pls be gentle

[RichardG]

Hi,

I've been lurking around this site for a couple of months and now its time for my first post (and suspect it won't be my last ). A couple of years ago I did an evening course stick welding at an agricultural college and I've got a SIP130 mig welder that I've never got on with; mostly down to my lack of practice I suspect.

Anyway a month ago I went ahead and took a punt on one of the Rehmann combined DC tig/mmc and plasma cutters of ebay. I know full well its at best a low end tool but I wanted to have a play at TIG welding without spending a fortune. Anyway having got a parweld argon single stage regulator from diy welding and a cylinder of argon from Adamsgas (1.29m3 @137 bar apparently) I set about laying down some beads on some mild steel. Wow, tig is lovely compared to the stuff I've done before, so controllable and less messy.

So enough waffle, onto my question, assuming I set the flowrate to be 10 ltpermin (approx a third of right hand dial?) and had the post flow set to 8ish seconds would I only expect to get the 1 1/2 hours worth of welding out of the cylinder? If not I suspect I either didn't read the gauge correctly or have a leak somewhere. Thanks for any suggestions.

Cheers

Richard

 

[Paul.]

I know there has to be some recommendations for flow rates etc, but use them as a starting point and experiment, i do a lot of tig work on stainless steel and rarely need more than 5 or 6 lpm, if you are working in a draft or outside then that may go up to 15 lpm, as for post gas you just need it long enough for the tungsten and the weld to lose red heat, usually 3 or 4 seconds is enough unless welding something heavy.
Paul

 

[Wozzaaah]

Richard, those cylinders contain 1288 litres (1.288m3) of gas so dividing that by your flowrate tells you how long it will last. 1288 litres/10lpm flowrate = 128.8 minutes total flow so taking into consideration your 8 second postflow, 1 1/2 hours sounds about right.

 

[RichardG]

Thanks gents. I knew argon went quicker than CO2 but I hadn't put two and two to get a couple of hours! A little less gas flow next time I think...

ATB

Richard