Welding Tips and Tricks

So I finally had enough of wasting consumables and talked to company into investing in a water separator to mount on the machine itself. We have a very bad moisture problem with our shop air lines that no one wants to address. I just read some where that people are using Nitrogen rather then shop air on their plasma cutters. Does anyone have any input or experience with the powermax 600 and Nitrogen?

bigworm40,
You can use Nitrogen anywhere that compressed air is used with a caveat, you need proper ventilation. If your in an open shop area then there is no problem. A small room or a confined space, then there is a chance of reducing the Oxygen to an unsafe level.

Nitrogen is ultra dry and should extend the life of your consumables substantially, but I'm not sure that the savings could be realized unless you have access to liquid Nitrogen in bulk. A plasma cutter uses quite a bit of gas and will go through a cylinder post haste.

Len

Make your own desiccant dryer. The large pellets are inexpensive.
The dryer is designed as a piece of pipe with fittings on either end.
Put a piece of screen inside the ends and use the larger desiccant pellets.
The pellets can be re-used if you dry them out in an oven.

WerkSpace has your answer.

Nitrogen is dry and does a great job on stainless and aluminum, but, in my experience, dry air works better on carbon steels. There seems to be a real advantage to the 21% O2 content of "air" over nitrogen in cutting carbon steels.

I would look at ways to dry air local to the plasma cutter, if they're too cheap for an air-dryer for the shop air.

Steve S

Interesting solution WerkSpace, is it air in at the bottom, out at the top?

That's correct. It works well, but it can work better if you cool the air first.
Try to run a long length of air hose between the compressor and water separator.
or you can build a copper coil with a fan to cool it down. Cool air drops its moisture.

Negativ3 wrote:Interesting solution WerkSpace, is it air in at the bottom, out at the top?

The best way of getting rid of humidity is thru refrigeration.
As air cools, the moisture condenses and can be collected in a water trap.
The trap can be drained on a regular basis.