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Acetylene Cylinder Question

About 10 years ago, I walked into the machine shop at a place I worked and there was one of the smallest acetylene cylinders sitting on the welding table with about 10 feet of flame coming out of the valve area. The building was a high bay, steel building so the risk of setting it on fire was low. After the cylinder had emptied itself, we looked it over and the solder overpressure/overtemp plug had come out of the valve, and dumped the contents of the cylinder to the air where it caught fire. Still pretty wound up, I called the gas supplier and their attitude was "Yeah, so what, put it outside and we will bring you another one Monday, go away". The next time my acetylene cylinder at home was empty, I never refilled it. Eventually, I swapped the oxygen and acetylene cylinders for another argon cylinder. Welding is all TIG now and cutting is saw or plasma.

Have any of you had one of those plugs come out? Is this a rare (I hope) occurrance?

Bob

Reply to
MetalHead
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I've never had it happen, this is the first time I've ever heard of it happening without the bottle being in a fire.

John

Reply to
JohnM

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I have not heard of it elsewhere either, but based on the "ho hum" I got from the gas supplier, I figured it was not unheard of. It's also possible that the guy at that supplier was just a pinhead. It cost them two customers.

Bob

Reply to
MetalHead

The closest I came to this was a leaky backseat on the valve. Looked over after some grinding and there was fire around the valve stem. I just torqued it open a little harder after that.

Shawn

Reply to
Shawn

Ummm, someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I was taught to only open the acetelyne valve about a 1/4 turn. Reasons given were that there is no backseat on the valve and if something goes wrong it's faster to shut off....

Have I been wrong for 35 years ????

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff Sellers

I was also taught that there is no upper seat and to open the acetylene valve 1 turn or less. Just for grins, I checked the O/A welding books I have and both agree on the lack of an upper seat. One was more generous and said a turn and a quarter were OK. Both said leave the wrench on the valve...

I have had the valve stem leak enough to get a small fire there. Tightening the packing nut on top of the valve slightly is what I was taught and it solved that problem.

Bob

Reply to
MetalHead

Local community college had a cylinder with a small leak in a fuse plug in the bottom of the cylinder. Student was grinding nearby. Spark ignited the acetylene that had built up in the concave bottom. Blew the cylinder two feet off the floor. What scared everyone was not the sound of the small explosion but the sound the cylinder made when it came back down on the concrete floor.

Reply to
footy

It might have been the acetone. Do they really put plugs in the bottom? Good grief! Designed by Goddard, I guess.

Pete Keillor

Reply to
Pete Keillor

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