Want to buy a welder of Ebay.......

>conversations with BOC it seems (according to my mate) that if you rent
>the bottles for a month or less there is either no charge or a really
>tiny one by comparison with annual rental plus gas cost. I haven't
>interrogated him about this fully but does it sound plausible?

Not very.

I think the arrangement is that if you return the bottles
before the year is up, they will refund (proportionaltely)
any unused whole months on the rental.

There will still be the transaction charge and the cost of
the gas (whether it's been used up or not) to be paid, and
you have to pay the tears rental up front of course even if
you intend only to keep them a short while.

I may be wrong of course, BOC seem to change their
pricing/rental structure fairly regularly.


Nick

On or around 05 Oct 2004 05:29:52 GMT, [email protected]
(Nicknelsonleeds) enlightened us thusly:

>>conversations with BOC it seems (according to my mate) that if you rent
>>the bottles for a month or less there is either no charge or a really
>>tiny one by comparison with annual rental plus gas cost. I haven't
>>interrogated him about this fully but does it sound plausible?
>
>Not very.
>
>I think the arrangement is that if you return the bottles
>before the year is up, they will refund (proportionaltely)
>any unused whole months on the rental.
>
>There will still be the transaction charge and the cost of
>the gas (whether it's been used up or not) to be paid, and
>you have to pay the tears rental up front of course even if
>you intend only to keep them a short while.
>
>I may be wrong of course, BOC seem to change their
>pricing/rental structure fairly regularly.

find out if you have an airproducts branch anywhere near. we have half-size
oxy and acetylene and a small coogar (similar to argoshield, I think) from
them. Can't remember what the rental is though, but I expect we have
records somewhere.

Austin Shackles wrote:

>find out if you have an airproducts branch anywhere near. we have half-size
>oxy and acetylene and a small coogar (similar to argoshield, I think) from
>them. Can't remember what the rental is though, but I expect we have
>records somewhere.
>
>

Hi Austin,

BOC are at Crawley and AP somewhere within similar distance of here -
I'm in Sevenoaks.

Do you recommend AP over BOC?

Rgds Richard

On or around Tue, 05 Oct 2004 19:10:56 +0100, Richard Savage
<[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:

>>
>
>Hi Austin,
>
>BOC are at Crawley and AP somewhere within similar distance of here -
>I'm in Sevenoaks.
>
>Do you recommend AP over BOC?
>
>Rgds Richard

dunno really, not had exeprience of BOC. ISTR Air products being less fussy
then BOC over bottle storage and so on.

On Tue, 05 Oct 2004 19:10:56 +0100, Richard Savage <[email protected]>
wrote:

>
>Do you recommend AP over BOC?

I use AP because they have outlet at my local calor gas dealer.

http://www.airproducts.co.uk/cylindergases/locator.htm

The smallest bottles (pt10)cost GBP26 to fill, GBP8/month to rent (but
they seem to mess me about on this) and GBP 8 for each time you
refill. I found it cheaper to pay a 5 year up front rental on bottles
I use regularly but I just draw a coogar cylinder as I need it and do
all my mig work within a month.

I had little success with the flux cored wire but intend to try again
with a different brand.

The disposable bottles last about 2m of weld so are no good for
fabrication.

I now have a CO2 fire extinguisher, which I must get refilled, to try
out but coogar makes a tidier weld.

AJH

[email protected] wrote:
>
> I had little success with the flux cored wire but intend to try again
> with a different brand.

IME gasless wire (which I assume you mean - flux cored is a totally
different animal) leaves a pretty ugly weld even when everything is
spotless. For the cost of it and the crap results it's not worth
bothering with.


--
EMB
change two to the number to reply

if youre welding up to 5mm plate youll need a 150amp mig welder .

this is about as big as you can run on 16amp mains .
if you have a 32amp socket you can use then a 200amp mig will work nicely .

i doubt though that youll require any more than a 150amp welder for almost all
you want to do .

gas , there are 2 types youll use for steel welding , firstly and cheapest is
CO2 carbon dioxide .

this is obtainable in refillable bottles from welding supplies outlets and cost
is £30 for the first full bottle and then about £9 per refill exchange of
bottle .
this is SEALEY make .

there is now also a small cylinder available , argon+co2 mix , this is around
£30 bottle rental for 3 years and around £10 for each refill, but these
cylinders hold 10x the gas the sealey bottles do .

co2 will suffice for the majority of welds , some say it cools faster and dont
like it but i doubt youll notice the difference between the 2 gases on offer .

as for wire youll use either 0.6mm or 0.8mm PLW [precision layer wound ] in 1kg
or 5kg reels .

0.6mm is used for welding thin plate , ie on car body repairs, but 0.8mm is a
good combination between thin and thicker plate ability .
you can weld thicker plate with 0.6mm but it will need to have wirefeed speed
high .

0.8mm will also not tend to stick or clog up in the liner in the torch and
make a birdsnest on the feedrollers .

for just thin plate welding you can use a 100-130amp mig ok.

one word of advice , if you buy a 150amp mig , then try to get one which uses a
euro adapter for the welding torch and use a binzel or parweld MB15 torch in
it .
you can also use an MB25 torch , these i buy for £30 .

spares are cheap for these torches , i pay 20p per welding tip , but i buy in
large numbers to obtain this price .

as for gas regulator youll need a "single stage dual gauge " type .

hope thats of help to you .

On or around 06 Oct 2004 17:46:53 GMT, [email protected] (M0bcg) enlightened us
thusly:

>co2 will suffice for the majority of welds , some say it cools faster and dont
>like it but i doubt youll notice the difference between the 2 gases on offer .

I found the 150 "hobby" Clarke I have here welds *much* better using COOGAR
(argon/CO2 and possibly oxygen - I can check if necessary), which is Air
Product's idea of mig gas mixture, than with plain CO2. On the same power
setting I can run the wire feed getting on for twice as fast and get much
nicer welds with more penetration.

the welder itself is pretty crap, took a good deal of fiddlin' to make it
even approach a reliable wire feed and it still balks at anything resembling
rust on the wire... I've reverted to little reels, the 5Kg ones rust too
quickly (or I don't use it enough, I guess) to be worth the saving in cost.

Bottle rental on Air products seems to be 19p per day, according to the
latest invoice. They've gone over to daily calculation - rentla appears to
be identical for the PT10 mig gas bottle and an MD30 Oxygen. Acetylene ones
are 24p per day. Not sure if "big" bottles are the same, nor if all rental
charges are the same either - mebbe if you rent more of 'em then you get
cheaper rental, I dunno.

They also charge a handling charge of about 9 quid to change the bottles.

[email protected] wrote:

>I use AP because they have outlet at my local calor gas dealer.
>
>http://www.airproducts.co.uk/cylindergases/locator.htm
>
>The smallest bottles (pt10)cost GBP26 to fill, GBP8/month to rent (but
>they seem to mess me about on this) and GBP 8 for each time you
>refill. I found it cheaper to pay a 5 year up front rental on bottles
>I use regularly but I just draw a coogar cylinder as I need it and do
>all my mig work within a month.
>
>I had little success with the flux cored wire but intend to try again
>with a different brand.
>
>The disposable bottles last about 2m of weld so are no good for
>fabrication.
>
>I now have a CO2 fire extinguisher, which I must get refilled, to try
>out but coogar makes a tidier weld.
>
>AJH
>
>
>
>

I'll have a close look at AP. I have used gasless wire in my shared
Migmate 130 with structurally sound results when both bottles of bar gas
emptied and the owner of the Mig couldn't get them refilled quickly enough.

Ta Richard

On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 17:57:01 +1300, EMB <[email protected]> wrote:

>[email protected] wrote:
>>
>> I had little success with the flux cored wire but intend to try again
>> with a different brand.
>
>IME gasless wire (which I assume you mean - flux cored is a totally
>different animal) leaves a pretty ugly weld even when everything is
>spotless. For the cost of it and the crap results it's not worth
>bothering with.

What's the difference? I used a 0.9mm wire, swapped polarity as
indicated on welder. It was flux cored and I used no gas. I am told
there is a wild variance of results between different flux cored
wires, I had bad results, no penetration and no flow, more like bird
crap than a weld.

AJH

[email protected] wrote:

> What's the difference? I used a 0.9mm wire, swapped polarity as
> indicated on welder. It was flux cored and I used no gas. I am told
> there is a wild variance of results between different flux cored
> wires, I had bad results, no penetration and no flow, more like bird
> crap than a weld.

"Gasless wire" generally means a flux cored wire designed for no-gas
use. "Flux cored wire" generally refers to a wire with a flux core
designed for use with a shielding gas in heavy welding applications
(250A or more welding current).
--
EMB
change two to the number to reply