I don't know if anyone has experience this but i'll try to make my story short and straight to the point.. I've been welding Stainless for about 9 years now.. and I've always gotten Argon From AirGas. I have four, 350 tanks that i swap out about every four months... When i was getting straight Argon from Airgas the weld quality was perfect very bright and rainbowish.. Now recently i switched over to a local company call Complete welding supply i spoken to the owner and he said by switching to them i could save about 40% percent of what i was spending with AirGas so i said hell i'll give it a shot.. I pick up my first 4 tanks... and 3 of the 4 tanks welded fine.. the 4th would not shield as nice.. Weld came out much more darker and blurry...so i didn't think much of it..i just proceeded to use it to weld chromoly as it's not as picky and finish up some non Stainless work i had around the shop.. I go back and swap out for 4 more tanks.. and this time only 1 off the tanks weld up nice the other 3 shield very horrible.. very dark and blurry.. so i'm thinking maybe i have some sort of a leak in the line that is causeing the torch to not get the correct pressure.. checked all that and nothing is wrong.. My question is am i missing something or can i go ahead and call the owner of Complete welding supply is complain....

 

possibly the purity and the care they take of the bottle matters.

I recently started using alliance and i'd notice sometimes its finicky but generally i update my gas lens nozzles and cups and check for leaks in my line. Since i use a water cooled torch any sort of leaks would be easily seen/experienced.

Dont get any stupid gas lenses from mc master, they SUCK !!! and every time i use them my welds go to crap.

 

My welds are fine.. it just very dark....

 

I'm guessing even when it says straight argon it can be diluted? Because i know they mix Argon c02 for mig welding so i'm sure they are trying to cut corners somewhere to save money possibly?

 

Its not uncommon @ all. I've tried 3 different local places and none of them could get me a quality bottle. Come to find out they really never kept the bottles seperate so @ one point it'd have had anything from C02, to tri mix, to helium, to argon in it. After sending back numerous bottles i was told it was impossible to have a "bad" bottle, so i had them test it and sure enough contaminated w/ 2% C02 and it made a huge difference in weld quality. Thus is why we dont even bother w/ these bottles anymore for shielding gas as theres no guarntee of purity.

 

Yeah, call them up and tell them you want all the bad ones replaced. As soon as you know it's bad unhook it and call them. If they want your business they will have to stand behind what they sell you and make the situation right at their expense.

 

We swap 14 250s about once every two months. I would say 20% of them weld like that. We only play $28.50/bottle, so I don't typically complain much. If the bottle welds like that, we reserve it for aluminum.

 

Sounds like they have poor quality control when it comes to keeping track of their bottles and making sure they don't have mixtures with other gases, unless it's needed and wanted. I'd switch back to your other place, if you've had good success with them. Either that, or keep returning bottles to the other place. Sounds like the new place doesn't care that much about keeping bottles uncontaminated.

 

before we switched to our liquid argon system we had 8 bottles and filled ~20x each month.

we had this same thing happen for us, but you could tell as you were welding(mig-ish). we change our gas lens' everyday, if not twice. with this we were going thru sometimes 5 gas lens' in a day.
I called up our gas supplier and same thing "are you sure, cause you're the only one calling us about it.." I told him either its all the gas your sending or all the lens...
after about 2 months of this on and off, they found a crack in one of their fill manifold that allowed o2 to siphon thru as the argon was filling the bottle...

call them, they should take care of it. GL

let me know if you want, he can contact our gas supply rep for a heads up


Ken

 

Yup, been there done that. After beating my head against the wall trying different lenses, tungsten, flow rates, etc. Finally swapped the bottle and it looked just like it was supposed to. Had it happen 4 times in about 4 years. The supplier has always taken care of it no questions asked.

 

How did you manage to use that much argon? We use 3.5 tanks per seat per month average, assuming an 8 hour work day and close to 30% time to weld efficiency. That would be enough argon for us to run 45 seats. Holy crap.

 

i got to school and work part time at a community college and we exchange about 15 350CFH argon bottles a week, we use airgas and for the most part have no problem, but there is the rare occasion where you get a bad bottle or one thats just not as pure and it can very easily make the weld look bad, call them up and ask whats going on because its not worth the money you save if your unhappy with the product.

 

backpurge ownz

 

yeah damn backpurging ate up all my argon realllyyyy fast!

But I guess AirGas had a better system for keeping the bottles seperate and filling the bottle only with it's original contents.

 

I use 4.8 purified argon.. It's a bit more expensive but it's always been good..