At last I have a nice big Y size bottle of Argoshield Light. But it is a pig of a thing to move around my nice clean workspace (see photo!). My solution was to use a handy 4 metre hose so that the welder could move around as before (it is mounted on the chassis of an office chair).
The good part of this story is that I also fitted a flowmeter (0-14 l/min) on the welder so I can easily check flow rate without reference to the regulator. As you can see I have only got a piddling little Italian apology for a regulator that I found at the bottom of the box that my TIG torch came in. So having fine control available with the flowmeter is a big advantage. So far so good but I have been plagued by leaks. Firstly when I got my new bottle home I could hear a very faint leak before I even touched the valve. This cured itself after I let a short blast of gas out and cycled the control knob a few times and pressure was around 215 bar so couldn't really complain. Next problem on fitting the regulator, it leaked like fury. The nose of the fitting had a couple of smal scatches just on the contact line. I had to polish these out evenly all round with some worn emery cloth and after several trial fits and tests,in my state of the art indoor testing laboratory, all is now gas tight. I will not be removing it until the gas is all used up (or another man sized regulator turns up).
The good part of this story is that I also fitted a flowmeter (0-14 l/min) on the welder so I can easily check flow rate without reference to the regulator. As you can see I have only got a piddling little Italian apology for a regulator that I found at the bottom of the box that my TIG torch came in. So having fine control available with the flowmeter is a big advantage. So far so good but I have been plagued by leaks. Firstly when I got my new bottle home I could hear a very faint leak before I even touched the valve. This cured itself after I let a short blast of gas out and cycled the control knob a few times and pressure was around 215 bar so couldn't really complain. Next problem on fitting the regulator, it leaked like fury. The nose of the fitting had a couple of smal scatches just on the contact line. I had to polish these out evenly all round with some worn emery cloth and after several trial fits and tests,in my state of the art indoor testing laboratory, all is now gas tight. I will not be removing it until the gas is all used up (or another man sized regulator turns up).
