For goodness sake keep your gas bottle tied up!

I was moving my welder on Saturday and forgot it was still attached to the bottle. Knocked over the MIG gas bottle I'd recently untied. Smashed the regulator off the bottle. Annoying as it was only couple years old and cost £50.


More worryingly this left the main gas supply pipe sheared cleanly in two. Thank God I'd closed the main bottle valve a couple of days before as otherwise I may not be here to tell the tale. With over 100bar pressure still in the tank presumably it'd have been fired across/around the room.

The tube was pointing directly as me so god knows what could of happened.

Bit of a sphincter twitching moment that was I can tell you!


Ned turned up about 10 minutes later, from what he says I was still white faced when he got there!

Cheers,
James

[Edited on 8/11/05 by James]

mines chained inside the weld trolly, with the valve shut off after every use .....

fire brigade joked that i should warn the local station - so they drive round the block a few times and listen for hte bang before they come to put any fires out. Seems they've an aversion to being blown up as well.

When i was doing a welding course at the local college they had the fire safety officer turn up. He wanted a list of all the acyetalyne bottles that were there. Whn i asked why, he said that if the place ever caught on fire they would roll up and check their list. If there was 5 bottles on the list they would stand over the other side of the car park and let the place burn until they had heard 5 bangs!

Surely everyone closes the main bottle valve at the end of every days work, and definitely before moving the bottle?

Fred

Don't forget, if you move an acetylene bottle, dont try to use it for i hour after. The liquid is held in suspension in kapok inside the cylinder, and if moved, the liquid can move up the cylinder. If you try and use it, it will spit the liquid instead of the gas.

Didn't know that about actetylene..! Will make a (large!) mental note of that.

Andy

The acetylene is dissolved in Acetone, isn't it?

David

The acetone is used to soak a calcium silicate and charcoal mix inside acetylene cylinders before the acetylene is pumped in hence the DA label (dissolved acetylene) and acts as a catalyst. Only about 5% of cylinders now use Kapok and asbestos to absorb the acetone and acetylene. The cylinders should always be stored and used upright and as Mark says allowed to revapourise if laid down for any reason. Also if there is a flame at the bottle end it should only be extinguighed by turning off the gas as it can spontaneously reignite with explosive results.

[Edited on 8/11/05 by Peteff]

Air products will do a bottle of mig gas with a built in regulator for the same cost as a standard bottle. This is so well protected it will be impossible to knock it off the bottle.

I have seen a few films of oxy and co2 bottles getting the neck broken off, they do go off like rockets and it takes a lot to stop them, brick walls and thick steel plate don't do it!

Caber

Get a wine makers cork and fix it to a blow gun, stick a 2l lemonade bottle onto the cork and give a full 150psi.

Now imagine it with the pressure in a gas cylinder!

I knocked my CO2 bottle over and smashed a 2 day old regulator off with the tap still open.
I always thought it would be bad if that happened so I only opened the valve enough to supply the gas I need to weld but it was still enough to move the bottle around the floor, fill the garage with CO2 and poo me up for a very long time!

I used to work at B.O.C. in the early 70's. Caber is not joking!
Having seen a hydrogen cylinder take off like a missile ( valve snapped off when it dropped off the lorry and friction ignited the hydrogen ) propelled by burning gas coming out of a tank filled to 2500 psi, I am now paranoid about them.

It was very spectacular tho'.

As far as gas bottles go, it's not am I paranoid, it's am I paranoid enough?

We were shown a safety video of an oxygen bottle set up in a rig and then having the valve guillotined off. No flames or anything, just gas pressure propelled it a great distance and stuck it through a 9" brick wall. It would be even more lethal now as they are filled to a much higher pressure, 300 bar. I swapped my full size bottle to a dumpy because of the handling problems and it's much less likely to topple. They last me plenty long enough for what I'm doing now.