Any lister rent a BOC Portapak? interested to discuss Pros and Cons.

- Alan

You only rent the cylinders, not the portapak. You can get similar size cylinders from other suppliers and buy gauges, bagging and a gun a lot cheaper as well but the BOC safire is a very good quality piece of kit.

Hi Alan

I rent from BOC but not the Portapak, the next size up. I use it to gas weld aluminium and also for annealing and I felt that a portapak set was a bit on the small side. I also rent a large pure Argon cylinder for TIG. All in all, it's an expensive exercise but I think Air Products are much the same price. The great thing is that our local BOC stockist is 10 minutes down the road and it is convenient. I use a BOC Saffire torch and that is excellent. I can dig out rental and refill costs together with the cylinder sizes I use if you are interested.

alb

John

If you've only got odd jobs to do now and then, one of these might be worth thinking about?

Thanks for all replies, further to my orginal post. I have access to oxy kit now and have checked out the costs of the smaller bottles. I was particularly interested to know from any 'Portapak' users how much use you get out of them before you have to refill and whether there are any 'hidden costs'
- Alan

If you have the BOC leaflet with the prices you will see there is an admin charge even if you fetch your own cylinders. The problem is the charge is the same if you fetch one, two or a hundred cylinders. My acetylene typically lasts more than twice as long as oxygen cylinder so it may be wise to invest in a larger oxygen and swap them together even if there is a bit left in the acetylene.