Welding Tips and Tricks

Hey guys,
I'm not sure why I am having such a hard time finding a water hose to go from a Miller Syncrowave 300 to a Coolmate 3. I don't even need the whole hose. Just a 1/4" hose barb adaptor. I called airgas, he didn't know. All the water hoses in MSC and Grainger seem to only have one end---I suspect they are made to go to the torch. I found one adaptor that is female-female, what I need is male LH thread to 1/4" hose barb. Or a new 10' hose with male LH on both sides.

Anyone have a part number?

thanks,
Mark

without looking I'd guess McMaster Carr has them can't believe a welding supply (airgas) doesn't, probably some of the online sites like arc zone or IOC

Here is a 5/8"x18 LH with a QD to a barb. Assuming the Coolmate is 5/8"x18, but it may not be, so you may want to check on that.

https://www.arc-zone.com/Quick-Disconne ... th=5_2432&

After a further researching I did find some stuff at Airgas Website. Instead of giving the part numbers to the sales guy at the local airgas I decided to order them from the website. This way it avoids me a 40 minute trip to AirGas.

thanks,
Mark

eliminator, do you live in my area? I have a 35 mile trip to air gas where I get the ... HUH ?? ...
Call the folks at arc-zone and tell them what ya got, IF what you ordered doesn't work out.

BillE.Dee wrote:eliminator, do you live in my area? I have a 35 mile trip to air gas where I get the ... HUH ?? ...
Call the folks at arc-zone and tell them what ya got, IF what you ordered doesn't work out.

LOL. I talked to airgas on the phone exactly one time. Never communicated with them since. They had no idea what they were taking about, and the few prices I was able to get out of them were at least 2-3 times higher than competitors. No thanks. No idea how they are able to expand as much as they have been. I must be missing something...

Around my area, the local Airgas store will happily slap a HazMat charge on everything as well.
1lb of ER70-S2? HazMat.
Leather TIG gloves? HazMat there as well...

I get it on a pressure cylinder, though CO2 being called "hazardous" offends me a little. On dry goods that can't hurt you unless you try to eat them (not even toxic, just choking hazard?)

Other LWS get my business instead, and then IOC or other sites online.

hey_allen wrote:Around my area, the local Airgas store will happily slap a HazMat charge on everything as well.
1lb of ER70-S2? HazMat.
Leather TIG gloves? HazMat there as well...

WTF ? Is that even legal? AFAIK, filler is not a hazmat material. Tungsten neither. Some imported welders do not include any tungsten due to import regulations, but I don't think that is in regard to hazmat.

I ordered filler from Jegs recently, no hazmat. I also ordered tungsten from Weldmonger recently and no hazmat. You should raise that with the manager and demand they remove it from your invoice if you were charged.

hey_allen wrote:I get it on a pressure cylinder, though CO2 being called "hazardous" offends me a little. On dry goods that can't hurt you unless you try to eat them (not even toxic, just choking hazard?)

Gas is legit, it is a hazmat material. So is black powder and smokeless powder.

hey_allen wrote:Other LWS get my business instead, and then IOC or other sites online.

Likewise, but I'm not here to throw my money away to my LWS because they want to charge hazmat fees, just sayin'...

Air gas charges a hasmat charge for all filler and unless you call them on it they do it on gloves and lenses as well. One of many reasons I don’t do business with them.

Poland308 wrote:Air gas charges a hasmat charge for all filler and unless you call them on it they do it on gloves and lenses as well. One of many reasons I don’t do business with them.

Josh,

Even on filler, is that legal? Gloves and lenses...that's really stretching it...I wonder how many large accounts they have where they make massive amount of money on non-warranted hazmat fees?

I rarely, if ever, go to AirGas primarily because their prices are so high, but this is good to know, just another reason not to shop there even more. I've been to one in my area ONCE. I bought a wire brush.

Most filler and tungsten contain heavy metals. So yes. Dot charges hazmat fees for all the compressed gas bottles too. That’s just there way of passing on the costs to the customer.

Poland308 wrote:Most filler and tungsten contain heavy metals. So yes. Dot charges hazmat fees for all the compressed gas bottles too. That’s just there way of passing on the costs to the customer.

Josh,

As far as hazmat shipping, it doesn't appear that tunsten by itself is by and large considered hazardous unless it is >99%, however tungsten hexafluoride is, which is a colorless gas.

Now, here's the interesting thing, and I don't know if this applies or not, but according to this MSDN, tungsten is hazardous when >99%. and in the case of 2% lanthanated it would only be 98%, or 1.5% ceriated, or most of them other than 100% pure tungsten. Not sure if I'm splitting hairs on this or not, but it could explain why tungsten electrodes as we use for welding doesn't need to be shipped hazmat

https://research.utdallas.edu/cleanroom ... ngsten.pdf

But when someplace like air gas buys tungsten from a manufacturer there probably buying enough weight that there getting charged has mat fees. I agree they shouldn’t charge it all the time like they do. They charged me a $12 haz mat charge once when I bought $20 worth on plastic cover lenses for my hood. I complained and they reimbursed me the haz mat charge, they said it automatically gets charged to every order, (just Incase they miss it for the things that need it). That was the last thing I ever bought personally from airgas.

Poland308 wrote:But when someplace like air gas buys tungsten from a manufacturer there probably buying enough weight that there getting charged has mat fees. I agree they shouldn’t charge it all the time like they do. They charged me a $12 haz mat charge once when I bought $20 worth on plastic cover lenses for my hood. I complained and they reimbursed me the haz mat charge, they said it automatically gets charged to every order, (just Incase they miss it for the things that need it). That was the last thing I ever bought personally from airgas.

Therein lies the scary part. Many people, even myself sometimes, just are not paying close enough attention when they buy something. I think we tend to put too much trust in some of these vendors and don't check our receipts. I do try to make it a habit to always check my receipt and what you describe is the very reason. If you go in and buy a dozen different items, it's often hard to add up in your head and/or notice a $12 charge.

Truth be told $12 is not a big hazmat fee, when I have had smokeless powder shipped in the past they charge about $28 for either UPS or FedEx. What AirGas is doing is purely ripping off their customers, IMO. I don't trust they even get hazmat charged to them no matter what tonnage they buy. Gas is a different story, for certain they do.

A friend of mine was hauling liquid asphalt to a job site in a semi trailer. Cop stopped him and started with the paper work noise. The cop said he wanted the hazmat paperwork. Friend said "for what?" Cop said your load. Friend said "well, you're the one standing on what I'm hauling and I don't need paperwork for hazardous materials." He was told to go deliver the load.
Anyway, I believe that the suppliers will do anything they can to get more money in their registers...one way or the other. Call it a fee, a tax or handling charge, it will get put into the register for some asinine reason or another. I'm on SS and have to pay income tax on that just so the governor can have something to piss away. Damn, I hate being in lockdown, too much time on my hands.
Stay safe and healthy everyone.

BillE.Dee wrote:A friend of mine was hauling liquid asphalt to a job site in a semi trailer. Cop stopped him and started with the paper work noise. The cop said he wanted the hazmat paperwork. Friend said "for what?" Cop said your load. Friend said "well, you're the one standing on what I'm hauling and I don't need paperwork for hazardous materials." He was told to go deliver the load.
Anyway, I believe that the suppliers will do anything they can to get more money in their registers...one way or the other. Call it a fee, a tax or handling charge, it will get put into the register for some asinine reason or another. I'm on SS and have to pay income tax on that just so the governor can have something to piss away. Damn, I hate being in lockdown, too much time on my hands.
Stay safe and healthy everyone.

Yup a charge is a charge, $$. Like it, catch it, or not. It is what it is, unless you catch it, think about it, and ask.

I'm quickly finding out Airgas is a pain in the ass. They are charging me tax. I have a shop with a tax ID for resale. Consumables used in performing the work are covered by this exemption. I know I submitted my tax number when I opened the account last year. Maybe it needs to be submitted annually. I fill out another Massachusetts ST-4 and I put Airgas as the vendor. They send it back to me with the name Airgas highlighted and I get told just fill in the right information. How the F would I know their address and department and what ever name they want to use for tax purposes? I don't know, THEY KNOW and they could have filled their part in. My information was complete, which is what they need.
I asked about the hazmat charge for tig rod and the person on the phone tells me "well it's used for welding so it's probably flammable". I said the box it is shipped in is way more flammable. The only sensible thing is to give up as there is no reasoning with some people.
If they don't fix the tax issue I will be buying on e-bay. Which ebay already has accepted my tax ID number.

It's all a bunch of BS. I get anything I used to get from AirGas at my new LWS that I've been using for about 4 years now. Everything is cheaper, and no hazmat fee to see for miles and miles and miles....

I'm no expert here but my experience is the tax break only applies to an item for resale, your consumables aren't sold they're used by you and don't leave the shop with your customers parts.

I do get a tax exempt on the wire I buy.

LtBadd wrote:I'm no expert here but my experience is the tax break only applies to an item for resale, your consumables aren't sold they're used by you and don't leave the shop with your customers parts.

No, I don't think that's true. When I had a resale number I could not pay tax for anything, but you are required to pay use tax if it's not something for your business. You will still have to pay tax at the end of the year if you do use it, although I think it's hard for them to find.

This is actually true if you buy from out of state and they don't charge sales tax, like my welder I just got. Pretty rare that happens anymore as most all States charge sales tax for the State you purchase from and/or where it ships. You are legally required to pay use tax unless it's for your business.

Here's an interesting thing. Back in the late 90s, I worked for VA Linux Systems, they hold the record on Wall Street for the largest gains for their opening IPO day. I setup online web sales for them, and at the time as they were sorting this out nobody was required to pay sales tax over the web, it's very complicated based on where someone purchases and where it ships, etc...but while this was up in the air, nobody was officially required to pay sales tax for sales over the web if they were out of state. VA said, and I don't know if this is true, that they were going to collect sales tax anyway because they didn't want to end up owing a huge amount of money at the end of the year. I always felt they probably just collected it and then didn't declare it. That's probably never happened with any business in the history of America...

In traverse city mi the airgas is 2/3 the price of the praxair...our only options. They have always treated me well.

If you buy equipment, or anything not for resale (for your business) you have to pay tax, I wish the gov was so generous that this wasn't true

LtBadd wrote:If you buy equipment, or anything not for resale (for your business) you have to pay tax, I wish the gov was so generous that this wasn't true

Yeah, I'm kind of scratching my head here on some of the tax comments. I'm required to pay sales tax for business purchases that are not for resale or are not under tax exemption for a govt contract in some situations. But the total purchase prices, including what was paid as sales tax, get deducted as business expenses at the end of the year anyway, so it mostly evens out as far as I can tell.

LtBadd wrote:If you buy equipment, or anything not for resale (for your business) you have to pay tax, I wish the gov was so generous that this wasn't true

Richard,

Right, I think I made it sounds as if something for your own use wouldn't require you pay the tax, but a resale license is exactly for that, for something you plan to resale. The customer needs to also pay you for it.

What I meant by the use tax is that you don't need to pay up front if you use it, but you need to pay when you do your taxes.

That's how it works here in CA.

Spartan wrote:Yeah, I'm kind of scratching my head here on some of the tax comments. I'm required to pay sales tax for business purchases that are not for resale or are not under tax exemption for a govt contract in some situations. But the total purchase prices, including what was paid as sales tax, get deducted as business expenses at the end of the year anyway, so it mostly evens out as far as I can tell.

You can still purchase products under your resale number and pay use tax for it later.

There is nothing to prevent you from purchases of items you will use under your resale number. You are required to pay use tax on it though, and the same holds true for someone not in business who purchases from out of State and is not charged sales tax, AFAIK.

Use tax is exactly that, for product you use. Resale tax is exactly for that, product you resale.

I have never done so, but I think what Mark was saying is that he can use his resale number on Ebay. This doesn't mean he doesn't need to pay use tax for it, not any more than buying any product. But if you business is resale and you purchase something to resale, you don't have to pay tax when you buy it, but you need to pay sales tax when you sell it.

I think my comments above were slightly confusing as I referred to buying product you would use for your business. Sorry if I confused anyone.