Welding Tips and Tricks

I'm sure someone has an answer for this one...I sure don't and no one else Ive spoke with seems to know either. the past year or so weve been getting bottle of acetylene that when you open them up they squirt the acetone out. This causes some nasty problems.. cant cut with it for starters, then you get another bottle and the stuff that is in your line and your regulator and torch you have to blow out air or it will mess up the seals and the hose.

There is 6 of us workin out there and weve all had it happen 4 or 5 times if not more the past year or more. We send the bottles back marked and explain it to the boss he cant seem to get it settled with the supplier he deals with. he gets reimbursed for it but its a pain in the butt when you gotta wrap up and go back to the shop to replace a bottle you replaced last night for an empty. Im one of the lucky guys I have enough room in my rack for extra bottles and keep em loaded up most of the other guys don't. I check em as well before I load em on the rack to make sure they don't piss the acetone out and have caught 3 or 4 before beforehand and marked them as such

Any idea what causes this?

Can you guarantee the cylinders have not been layed down for at least a few hours prior to use?

Coldman wrote:Can you guarantee the cylinders have not been layed down for at least a few hours prior to use?

yup they just stand there in the bin waitin for some crazy like me to put em on their truck, and we have em standing in the truck too

Then you got me, never heard of that s#it happening before. Could be a quality control issue at fill, someone will have had it before round your way and will chime in.

I know this can happen if the bottle is laid down but that's not the problem, the only other time it has happened was one winter (1993 or 94 I think) it was 20 some below zero at home for a week or so and even colder up on the mountain. I had 2 bottles in the rig and they both went that way, they figured it was the slightly chilly temps what caused it, all I know is I couldn't use the torch to thaw out my hands. I'm tellin ya it was cold, I took a leak one morning and made a pissicle and froze fast to the ground til spring

If the draw rate on the regulator is set too high then liquid acetylene can appear.

Would an overfilled cylinder cause that? Try cracking the valve at the LWS when you pick up a new cylinder, maybe? If it happens to you all the time then the supplier would want to know about it. If there's problem on their end then all their customers would be affected and they'd be calling in too.

An acetylene bottle contains a porous media, typically pumice, and acetone in which the acetylene is dissolved. A chief culprit in acetone coming from a bottle that's been upright for the required minimum time is voids in the porous media. When drawing acetylene, it can behave like soda in a bottle and push liquid to the top.

Excessive vibration (lots of highway time?) can cause the media to compress and settle leaving a void at the top of the cylinder.

I'd also be checking the re-certification dates stamped on these bottles. You will find many on older bottles, look for the most recent. There are 5-year certifications and 10-year certifications. A five-year will have month, the tester's company stamp, and year, followed buy a "+", as 03[]15+. The ten year will be the same format except end in "+*" (Plus-Star).

Regardless, I'd document each occurrence as thoroughly as I could, as the vendor should be liable for equipment damage for faulty tanks.

Steve

Looked at the bottles this afternoon they are all within 3 or 4 years, whatever it is its annoyoing one of the shop guys guys hooked one up this morning and got one. I don't think its from traveling the roads I did that for years and only had the 2 that did that in the middle of the winter I talked about earlier. I guess as long as the owner gets reimbursed he isn't gonna fuss too much, we will just run back and get another bottle if we need one