Hi collective wisdom,

How long would you expect a cylinder of hobby weld 5 last?

I use it around 15lpm and it's only done about 2kg of wire...

Capacity - 1.34m3
Water Capacity - 9 Litres of gas per cylinder

Jon

Play around with the gas flow, I have got mine down to 5-6lpm indoors and works fine, however if you are working outside 15 may be needed.

Hi, Hobby gas bottles are never full they must leak or something because the never last long you'd be better off getting a larger bottle from gas supplier.
I can't remember how many times I've complained mainly to Halfords to no avail.
Hope this helps. Mike

Hobby welders often come with cheap valves (both in the gun and on the cylinder) which leak slightly even if closed meaning you can lose a fair amount of gas even when you're not using it.

Better to get a small bottle from a supplier and a decent gauge.

could possibly turn the flow down to 10lpm to try and get longer weld times
You may be able to go lower than that without causing issues if indoors

The answer to your question is missing gas bottle pressure to calculate the total weld time I think

pressure x litres = total litres

to get total welding time is
total litres / flow rate

I could be wrong though :-)

Regards
Rob

A quick search round the web comes up with

At 10lpm:

Hobbyweld 9.5l @ 137 bar => 2 hours 10 minutes.

Since your using 15lpm your weld time will be a lot less

I usually set mine about 8lpm (indoors)

Cheers
David

i run about 7-8 up to about 11-12 outside. if its really windy i wait for a nicer day

Cheers guys, running at a lower lpm works fine. I'll keep switching off between welds.

Jon

The other thing I found with the hobby bottles was that unscrewing the valve from the bottle when it's not in use made a huge difference to how long a bottle would last. I've had some go flat over the course of a week of being connected but not used before, which is a massive PITA.

Depends how much welding you have to do of course, but a proper bottle with valve and gauge is the way to go. Think I paid my local welding supplies place £50 lifetime rental + £30-40 for the Argoshield gas + £about £35 for a valve/gauge. Connects directly to the little white hose on the welder and has the security of a decent shut off valve so you don't lose gas when not welding.

Have a read through this

http://www.theminiforum.co.uk/forums/topic/264295-help-needed-with-a-dispute-with-hobbyweld/?fromsearch=1

There has been another simular topic recently on the same forum