Welding Tips and Tricks

My grandpa picked up a smaller bottle of helium. Not sure if it’s full or not didn’t check, but I was wondering if I can take that into my LWS and get it switched to pure argon or not?

Any interest in keeping the helium, for aluminum TIG?

Your LWS may let you swap it for an argon bottle of the same size, assuming it's an "owner bottle" and not a rental size bottle. Best to call and find out first, because LWS procedures vary by region and provider. They may require you to pay for a hydro test if it's out of date, for instance, before you can swap it for another bottle.

The helium bottle valve, CGA 580, is the same as the valve as argon, nitrogen, and c-25. If the LWS doesn't cooperate you can buy fittings to transfill from your larger bottle of argon into the smaller helium bottle... but a good idea to research this first, so you know what you're getting into.

Helped a guy by brazing the copper lines to his new AC unit, he gave me a 150cf bottle of nitrogen, took that to my LWS and got a argon of the same size, of course had to pay for the argon.

Nick be sure you won't need the helium before you give it up, it's worth more $$ then any other welding (shielding) gas you'll buy

As stated the valves are the same but as helium is expensive you may want to hang on to it for now. My experience is that if you are patient you'll find cylinders at good prices pretty consistently.

My local welding gas supplier (Carolina Carbonics of Greensboro, NC) charges $22 for a hydro-test, $17 to sandblast and paint a cylinder and new replacement valves run in the $22-$30 range all of which makes old cylinders pretty easy on the wallet. $60-70 for an inspected cylinder with a new paint and a new valve is OK in my book. When I buy a cylinder I always have the valve replaced. It seems an inexpensive way to be sure I won't have any valve issues.

My last cylinder purchase was a 60 CF aluminum oxygen cylinder for $35 Craigslist find about two months ago that was about 20 minutes from the house and has some gas in it. After hydro-test I'll have less than $60 in it. My other oxygen cylinder is a 122 CF aluminum one that was a new, old stock (NOS) medical oxygen cylinder that had never been put into service. I bought it, had it hydro-tested and a new valve installed and had around $150 in it.


Lance

I don’t have an AC tig welder yet and won’t for awhile sadly. I just bought a multimatic 215 with a tig kit and would rather have the extra bottle. I’ll see about it. It might be too odd of a size and they may not exchange jt.