Looking for a torch and need some help

[LIMA BEAN]

All my stuff is Victor except my rosebud and I own my tanks. I use flashback arrestors too.

 

[LonesomeSTX]

What are flashback arrestors?

 

[AngryLepercon]

Weld master torch victor gauges is what I prefer. Torch feel to the user is what counts though. Acetylene is the route to go. We use mapp gas at the mine but it is junk for rust, takes longer to heat up. Mapp gas uses more oxygen meaning you can slice something from 3 inches away rather then being right on it thus decreasing the amount of smootz getting into the tip. Arrestor is just a device that mounts between the torch and the hose or the hose and the gauges to keep the flame from burning all the way back to the bottles causing a serious problem.

 

[LonesomeSTX]

Thanks, that makes sense.

 

[AllanD]

I used to have a coffee can full of burned up two piece propane cutting tips

I've never had an acetylene tip go bad the same way.

Using the correct size cutting tip for what you are sutting is usually an excellent idea for making neat cuts...

what I was doing, which was cutting structural steel for engineering test stands in the aircraft industry... using the right tip left cuts that were almost indistinguishable from a saw cut, which save an awful lot of time over making saw cuts and saved time during clean-up and prep for the welder.

I was technically engineering staff and we had a union welder (Union shop) who was aerospace certified and he was fully content to sit on his hands
while I make most of the precision cuts, simply because as he and my boss both phrased it, I was much better at it...

He was carefully trained to join things and had little experience in that shop or in the service before (naval aviation) in flame-cutting steel. he did when I was done....

As I jokingly said on my last day there (they were closing that plant and relocating most of the people to Missouri) You are now qualified to precisely torch parts off cars in any junkyard in the USA....

Less jokingly I made him and several experienced machinists that sometimes the "ugly way" was often the most efficient way.... especially when working with the hard surfaced steel plate steel we used as test jig table tops.
that stuff was absolute murder on cutting tools.

We also had fun spot anealing those plates prepping for
drilling mounting holes... but the stuff was very rigid and
very dimensionally stable.


AD

 

[LonesomeSTX]

I doubt I will go through tips unless I just do something wrong.

 

[kcm1582]

We had that happen with an acetylene tip, guy next to me was cutting the shocks out of the back of a f150 and had the torches set wrong. He ran the preheater adjuster wide open and set the flame with the main oxy valve so when he hit the lever to cut the preheaters were starved for oxygen and melted the tip. A new tip and proper setup and the second shock was out in all of 10 seconds.

 

[LonesomeSTX]

I can see me doing something like that.