Welding Tips and Tricks

I have a serious water problem in my air. I have a 5 dryer/filters, a homemade water trap, and I can hook a blower nozzle on the line and it looks like a pressure washer. I need a way to dry my air. I drain the tank a couple times a week and still get water. Anyone know a good dryer or water trap. I found some good contact tips for my plasma cutter that have withstood the water a thousand times better than the Everlast tips did.

Matt,
Can you answer a few questions? Is your compressor oiless or oil? You mentioned filters, what kind are they? And can you post a picture of at least the lines and filters?
With that said, you should drail your compressor at least a few times a day. While expensive, there are automatic tank drains you can add so you do not have to worry about draining the tank all the time.
During the summer months you will experience a whole lot more condensation than the winter.
For your filters, I would use the traditional water traps but also add desiccant filters as well. The benefit is you will know exactly when it's time to change them. They do a lot better than other filters in my opinion.
I imagine with the constant use of your compressor you are probably causing it to run all day.
Try some of these and see what happens.
-Jonathan

I will take some pics tomorrow. I believe it is an oil-less compressor, I have a desiccant filter in line, three water traps and a homemade pipe water trap and drain. I here the compressor running almost constant between the plasma and the air grinder I run. I know part of my problem is that I have to run a 50 foot hose from the compressor in one building to my workshop where I have it hooked into the traps and filters then a 20 foot slinky hose is what I run the grinder, blower, and plasma with. If I didn't have that hose collecting condensation all day it would help a lot.

Compressed air is a very expensive power source and grinders/die grinders use heaps of air. If you replace these tools with electric tools, your power consumption will go down and air will be easier to dry for where you need it most - plasma cutter.
If you must use air tools for whatever reason (safety etc) you can always keep a smaller compressor for your plasma that can be upgraded with tecky stuff to dry it out at lower cost than the single bigger common compressor where the dry air is wasted.

Desiccant driers work really well when selected for the correct flow rate against local ambient design (humidity) conditions. Refrigerated air driers work good too and can be considered if you can get one at reasonable price. Ultimate dry air is achieved with a refrigerated drier followed by desiccant drying. I did this once for a project and achieved a dew point of -60*C (-76*F). Cost heaps. Me I would go for electric grinders.

Thanks for the replies. I have an electric grinder that I use to cut and run a flap disk then I have the die grinder with a de scaling wheel that I use to prep all my weld joints. I don't run it a lot but my electric supply is limited, I cannot run a florescent shop light and my welder at the same time I am working on fixing that, I have too lite of gauge wire going to the building but I have a cable that runs from the pole to a house that is just laying around and I am going to run it from the breaker box to the building and put in a 230 amp outlet to run my Everlast then wire a 110 outlet off of it to run my HH140. Then I will leave my other outlets, on different breaker, to run my grinder, compressor, lights, etc.. I will look into replacing the one filter.

Now I need to consider a Dryer... It's been so humid here lately, and I am finally getting to building some stuff, using my prize collection of Dotco and Sioux air tools.... I started seeing moisture coming through the lines... first time in the 20+ years I have had the compressor (5HP/ 175PSI/ 80Gal) and had a problem with moisture... I may consider a small, 10CFM refrigerated cooler for the Plasma ...