Welding Tips and Tricks

Yup we decided to test new bottle from Linde.

It's light, more compact, it got digital meter and it's cool

AGA, which is local gas distributor, will take care of filling the bottle. You just simply take empty bottle to outlet and grab a new one with you. Optional accessory's are wheels, longer handle and regulator of course.

Digital meter will show you how much gas you have left and when flow is set, it will show you your possible welding time in minutes. It also peeps when gas is running out.

That is just plain cool. I always seem to run out but the gauge says 100.

How much lighter is compared to a reg tank? I'm not getting any younger LOL

Bottle in the picture is 20 l bottle with 300 fill pressure. Empty weight is 22 kg. Old one weights 36,5 kg.
So new bottle is quite much lighter, but also contains 45 % more gas.

It's certainly innovative. From a price point, how does it compare to a regular bottle?

(Incidentally, we have to rent our bottles here - usually annual charge. That way, the supplier makes sure we pay for them many times over.)

Ok, I'm possibly over thinking this, but here goes.

As an Imperial units user, I was eyeing this bottle, and then asking myself just how much argon was actually in there.
This prompted me to break out the engineering math and to start doing the conversions, using the information at hand.

For a 20 liter bottle, that translates to 0.706 cubic feet at 1 atmosphere.
The pressure in your bottle is what stumped me though. You stated it was at 300, with no unit given.
Making some guesses and sanity check testing the math after plugging in the values, I'm either not understanding something, or the bottle is considerably stronger than what I've seen the steel bottles here on the other side of the pond rated at!

300 BAR translates to 4351 PSIG, which I've never seen a bottle over around 3k PSI, but who knows. If this is the unit of measure in use, it would carry out to a total volume of ~209 cubic feet which isn't bad at all for a fairly small package!

(300 MPa translates to 43,511 PSIG, so I suspect that is NOT the unit in play... )

So, is this a correct guess on the pressure unit, and if so, do you know what the bottle is made of?


I was just wondering what volume that cylinder holds, since I've been shopping around at buying a larger cylinder and it caught my curiosity.

It'll be a 300 bar bottle.

Newer bottles here in europe are moving from the current/common 200 bar ones to new 300 bar versions to get the same gas volume in smaller. more portable containers or get a bigger gas charge in regular sized ones.

Bye, Arno.

I saw my BOC rep and asked when they will supply these great new cylinders currently available in Europe?
He said he I would have to make do with this:
for a very long time. Apparently it keeps you cool with digital airflow while lugging the heavy bottles. (You spin it with one of your digits).

In the meantime they have been replacing the lighter aluminium cylinders with really heavy steel just to piss us off some more.

(BOC are owned by Linde)

Lol.....very cool cylinder.

If only it specified the PPM of all other trace constituents as well

Oscar,
You can get every cylinder that you use analyzed and it will tell you everything that it has in it down to less than 1ppm. Your $70 cylinder of Argon now cost $750 (additional), do you still want to know what else is in there? I know that when they tell me it's 99.997% pure for free that I'm willing to trust them and not worry about what the 0.003% is, but that's just my cheapskate side coming out I guess.

On rare occasion you'll get a cylinder that has been filled with something less than standard but it's not worth being punished with higher everyday prices of every cylinder being analyzed to weed those few out.

Len

I like!
I bought my own E size cylinder here in Oz but I never checked about what happens when it reaches the end of its lifespan, 10 years I think. Also, my gauge shows Co2 at around 500 kPa.

You will be able to get it tested and recertified for another 10.

weldin mike 27 wrote:You will be able to get it tested and recertified for another 10.

Ok thanks Mike, but odd thing is, they swap over cylinders which means I no longer have the one I started out with.

gnabgib wrote:

weldin mike 27 wrote:You will be able to get it tested and recertified for another 10.

Ok thanks Mike, but odd thing is, they swap over cylinders which means I no longer have the one I started out with.

That's not odd, that's standard procedure, and you'll never have to worry about that ten-year retest. Buying the bottle was almost like buying an agreement with your supplier.

They have no reason to check their records for a contract when they can sell you gas.

Steve S

That's not odd, that's standard procedure, and you'll never have to worry about that ten-year retest. Buying the bottle was almost like buying an agreement with your supplier.

They have no reason to check their records for a contract when they can sell you gas.

Steve S[/quote]
In that case, definitely better than renting! Thanks Steve.

Sorry for the delay guys....

To correct myself first. I wrote little misleading about buying. We didn't actually bought that, but rented it. Here in Finland we do agreement for renting specific amount of bottles for 3 year for example.

Rent at the moment is same as with old bottles for now. It will be little higher after one month testing. How much higher then, I really don't know yet.


@ Hey allen
Bottle is made of steel cylinder, but is covered with plastics. Notice that it's much wider than old bottle, so that is why it does look smaller.


@ Oscar
At the moment there is 4 different gases available.
- Argon that is at least 99.99 (most used purity grade)
- Mison argon which is same as first one, but it does contain NO around 0,03%. This will reduce ozone what is normally formed during welding. Ozone is dangerous for welder so that is a good thing to get away. In the other hand Mison gases tends to leave color on the weld. So silver shiny beads cannot be welded with this one. Also it is not recommended to be used as a root gas due to color effect.
- Pure nitrogen, 5.0 if I don't remember wrong.
- Mison 18 which is gas for mag welding. Mixture of argon and 18% of CO2. Also contains NO too.



Little chart...