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
snip
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
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
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
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
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.
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