friend of mine suggested i just get a bigass liquid argon tank instead of filling up my 280 tank every week or sometimes more often. has anyone done this before? worth it?

also, i wanna build a welding chamber kinda like sand blasting cabinet so i can just fill it with argon and not have to worry about plugging up tubes etc.
was thinking about building an aluminum frame and use plexiglass for all around visibility/weight. thoughts?

 

liquid argon is iffy, if you can use a whole tank in 7 days then its kind of worth it. I've used it before, couldn't tell a difference. Also, the tank will evaporate by its self. One day its full, the next its empty. I use 4-5 large 330 tanks at a time. I would suggest getting a few more tanks. If you only have one 280 tank, how are you purging? Hope this helps

 

Dewars are great, but only for constant use. They vent often when not used to maintain a certain gas volume. Production facilities are well served with them. Think shift work and 24/7.
The chambers are good, but are not real great for dexterity and everything gets crazy hot when surrounded with Argon. Melting things becomes a problem.
A chamber large enough to do any real portion of your work in costs a lot to fill properly.
Look at who uses them...Companies that do work for aerospace. Akrapovic uses torches on most if not all of their Ti stuff.

 

Problem is I can't find anyone around here that will sell larger than 150cf tanks, they only lease and thats a huge waste of money. So you guys are saying the liquid tank won't lsat long

 

If you drive to weld supply to fill up then the gas alone pays for renting the big tanks cause you drive to the weld supply half as much, so you really use half as much gas.

Oh yeah. Dont buy any of the used Argon 300 tanks off CL in dallas. There is a dude on there selling stolen tanks. I almost bought one but i could tell he was shady and it was stolen.

 

If your not using over 6 300+cf tanks a month using it daily liquid will not pay off as over half your volume will vent to atmosphere w/in a few weeks, then you essentially literally did throw $$ in the wind.... Expect to fill a liquid tank every 2-3 weeks wether your using it or not.

 

it doesnt make sense to pay monthly for a tank if i can buy one for ~300. unless i plan to keep/use them for less than 3 years, anything longer than that and its cheaper to buy straight out in the long run.
p.s. you should swing by sometime, give me a buzz.

 

that i didnt know that it automatically vents out. good to know!
i was told by someone a liquid tank would last me 6 months.. :/

 

A flexible bag style bubble chambers would probably be better than a cabinet for what you want to do, you should look into them. We have a plexiglass chamber and a liquid argon tank and we go through alot of gas. Hearing the bottle hiss all day just sounds like throwing money away.

With a bag style chamber you can vaccum all the air out than fill it with argon. It fills the chamber faster with less argon. Plus with bags you can cut the plastic to whatever size your part is so for small parts your not gassing up a huge chamber.

 

You are nowhere near the usage volume needed for that to make sense. We swap 20 250s a month and our gas supplier did the calcs and it would still dissipate before we could fully use it.

 

At 20 units/month liquid should save you quite a bit of $$. The liquid tanks up here equate to about 11-12 300's so if your using a lot of volume you'll save the $$, if not your throw it in the wind. Here 6-7 300 HP tanks are about the same price as a liquid dewar.

 

Also remember that you have to get the parts into and out of a glovebox type chamber. Every time you open the door, you start over, and that's a lot of gas.

 

We pay $26/250, I cant remember the exact quote but from what the rep told me... I don't remember it being cheaper per cu ft. But according to the calcs we would lose half the volume by the time we would need the second half of the tank (supposedly). We are trying to get permits to put in a liquid oxygen tank for our cutting machines so we will see how well these things really hold their juice.

 

Have you thought about getting rid of the gas altogether and building a vacuum chamber?