what a difference

[d c]

i'm still a relative noob regarding mig welding (well all welding tbh) i recently bought a used clarke 90pro and have been playing with it in the shed. the other day i was practising on an old car bonnet and the welds were rubbish compared to what i was doing when i first started a few weeks back. then i realised the small bottle of co2 that came with the welder had ran out. so i fitted a new bottle of argon mix and wow what a difference. it seems so much easier now

 

[sprayerDrew]

Yes mate i have just made the same move with an air products cylinder and i also cant believe the difference!

 

[Iain Westland]

try to steer clear of disposables. expensive and last minutes,

Personal opinion here, factor in easy of use, gas on tap, less frequent visits to MM et al, and the apparent high cost of rental and gas become extremely good value.

I have my bottles delivered (W size), they come on a day to suit me. I don't have to take time off from work (at least an hour if the local shop is quiet, a lot longer if the council workers are in) and the 'high' delivery chargestarts to seem ok. I can service a car in the time it takes to collect a bottle, plus I can quote on jobs while I am waiting, cant do that when I am away.

iain

 

[pedrobedro]

The rent on my cylinder is equivalent to £1.20 a week roughly. That would get me a half pint of bitter in the pub

 

[metalspanner]

Just been looking into shielding gas suppliers, and although you have to have a contract, 85 quid a year and then 27 per medium size bottle,co2 plus a handling charge.
When compared to gasless wire and disposables, it all starts to make some sense to change over, flux wire is great for small jobs outside in particular, but the quality of the finished weld, although sound is not great, and I have had problems with weld root penetration with the flux wire.
I am picking up a second hand portamig tomorrow, and will be getting gas sorted out for that, soon as I know it works fine.

 

[Iain Westland]

if your going for a contract then co2 is not an option. Its not that much more for argoshield light and the quality of welds far out weighs the cost.

I can only talk from my charges, but even with delivery a W size bottle comes in around £90. Each one should give about £1500 worth of welding minimum. could pick the bottle up and save about £40, just need to shut the garage for at least 1 hour. And that could loose a lot more than £40.....

 

[KMpuggy]

i'm still a relative noob regarding mig welding (well all welding tbh) i recently bought a used clarke 90pro and have been playing with it in the shed. the other day i was practising on an old car bonnet and the welds were rubbish compared to what i was doing when i first started a few weeks back. then i realised the small bottle of co2 that came with the welder had ran out. so i fitted a new bottle of argon mix and wow what a difference. it seems so much easier now

I done a similar sort of thing with my welder and was wondering why the welds were utter crap, realised after 5 mins i had forgot to turn the gas on. Oh well, we all have to learn.

 

[SirDick Diodenob esquire]

I agree with autocare on this one , I am not a proffessional welder but the £60(inc vat ) I paid for a size Y argoshield light on the volkzone offer( first year rental plus first fill and no delivery charge ) means about five disposables before breaking even and thats not going to take long . I am as tight when it comes to spending money as anyone and spent a lot of time checking out other possibilities and I would have avoided putting money into BOC if I could but I cant see any better deal even on ebay .

 

[backpurge]

I would have avoided putting money into BOC if I could
.

Interesting comment which mirrors what a lot of people on here say, I work for BOC and am genuinely interested why they come in for so much stick

 

[gavuk]

most gas suppliers treat diyers the same as big buisness,non of us mind paying for gas used ,no-one likes the rental/handling charges,lost count of how many threads are started about rent free gas ........

 

[malcolm]

I didn't realise you worked for BOC Backpurge.

This is largely a DIY forum. The problem with BOC for us is they try to make profit from bottle rental. With bottle rental being the major cost for DIY use it makes BOC unattractive to us. We'd rather the profit was on the gas.

It's a killer is bottle rental. My own TIG didn't have much use last year so I returned an almost full bottle last year for the sake of saving £70/year on bottle rental. My TIG is now bottleless and I will be TIGless until I can pick up a bottle from one of independents. There's a Gasman distributor in Dunstable for when I get around to it.

These rent free or small rent bottles are much more suited to DIYers. We've all got other jobs and don't get into the workshop as much as we would like. Would normally take me well over a year to get through a size Y on the MIG, and I'm a heavy DIY user. The norm is probably a couple of years on a size X.

Justin from BOC seemed to be making moves to tackle the issue, and a few of us had sensible deals, but that's gone quiet now.

 

[gavuk]

I currently use Argon for tig (airliquide) and have a co2 bottle for mig but not as nice as argon/co2 ,but it costs only £12 for a refill and no rental!,...i would have argon/co2 but for the rental charges ,come to that ,i'd have oxygen and propane too if the rental charges reflected better the use it would get .....

 

[Iain Westland]

bottle rental is a boon for me though, if they did away with that then the gas would go up. I use 4+ 'W' size cylinders a year so the £25 give or take per bottle average a year in rental is ok. But for smaller users yea, its quite a bind...
iain

 

[backpurge]

All very valid points guys, I suppose it's the typical case of "you can't please all of the people all of the time"

An ideal situation I suppose would be some sort of two tier system based upon peoples annual use but in honesty it would be a nightmare to try and police, glad I'm on the techy side of things and don't have to get overly involved with the commercials.

 

[gavuk]

No probs Backpurge ,we won't hold you responsible!......a 2 tier system or low user rate would be ideal .....have a word!.......until then i'll soldier on with co2.....and may experiment with mixing like Shenion does....

 

[backpurge]

Will see what I can do

It's all about what people want, if all you want is to buy gas with no tech back up or support the small independants do a fantastic job that we couldn't begin to do, if however you are going to want access to a range of other services it has to be paid for somehow.

Look at it this way, you buy a MAG welder from a DIY shop, most of them will take your cheque and wave you goodbye, get one from companies such as ourselves, and if you want, someone like me will come out, show you how to set the machine up, get you started on welding whatever you are going to be doing, advise on fault finding etc, which I don't think is bad value for your £80.00 a year rental or whatever it is, on the other hand you can spend £300.00 on a welding course, it's horses for courses

 

[Paul.]

I have no real problem with the cost of the gas or even the rental, but as a small industrial user the fixed charge for collection leaves a nasty taste every time I have to pay it, I currently only hold 3 cylinders and getting them to run out at the same time is impossible, so collection charges make up a fair percentage of my gas costs, any other supplier who tried this would soon lose business, a few steel suppliers once tried it, to their cost, but then steel is a competitive business. the two major gas suppliers currently have no competition,

 

[SirDick Diodenob esquire]

Backpurge , I have the greatest respect for the techies at BOC going back 40 years my dad worked at what we called the ' Oxygen Station ' which has been trimmed down a bit but still has a few of the enormous tanks I remember marvelling at as a kid as I walked past them going to and from school every day . At the time the people working inside this potential giant bomb were heroes to me in their efforts to contain it . The people I dont want to get my money are the wheeler dealers at the top who are effectively taking jobs out of the UK in their relentless quest to globalise to remain competitive and its not just the BOC/Linde management I feel this way about its every multi national including my ex employer of 30 years . All they need to do is bring down their bottle rental charges and I will feel much better about them .