welcome to whale.com i'm paul your host and today's episode is based on a viewer request
from the uk that has to do with oxy propane cutting long time viewer ashley herrod writes
hey guys i've recently purchased an oxygen propane starter kit with torch tips flashback resters etc
so i've been trying to get a clean cut and mess with the settings but still getting a lot
of bubbled up slag on the underneath of the cut which seemed to be welding the cup back together
any chance you guys could do a troubleshooting video explaining
what to do to fix common problems well ashley this one's for you
now a lot of you are probably familiar with oxyacetylene cutting since it's more commonly
used on the job site due to its higher heat and ability to cut that much faster
it is well known fact that acetylene produces a sharper and more focused flame than propane
as a matter of fact acetylene generates 40 of thermal energy in the inner flame comb
unlike propane which generates less than 10 thermal energy another advantage of acetylene is
that you can gas weld with it which you can't with propane since it doesn't have the reducing zone
to clean the steel surface like acetylene does for your information because of the heat
input difference the cutting tips are designed differently so they are not interchangeable so
good thing about thermal cut is this is their acetylene tip
and it's a one-piece tip and then this is the propane tip and it'd make it hard to get it
mixed up because it's totally different design because it's for a totally different gas and
that's a good thing about thermal cut when they engineered these
is it's hard to get them mixed up so you can determine your propane from your acetylene tips
and you'll also notice all tips are numbered to help match proper material thickness
and guides are available from all manufacturers and should be followed to get the best results
also remember to use a tip cleaner so the tip is free of debris and that you make good quality
cuts with all saddling's advantages why use propane well it's cheaper much easier to come by
especially here in the states where you can find it pretty much anywhere at home improvement stores
or where barbecue supplies are sold i'm going to go through some setup
and show you some common mistakes and talk you through the do's and the don'ts
so you can get quality results every time and ashley hopefully this helps you solve
your problem first off as you can see i got all my components to set up this propane cutting rig
and it's really no different from a acetylene cutting rig it's left-handed thread you know
what i'm saying just like acetylene is and the oxygen's a right-handed thread so
and it has the little notches in the gauge but i'm going to use the acetylene gauge from thermal cut
and the cutting tip so let's get started so first we'll put on the fuel gauge or the propane gauge
next i'll put the oxygen on it's a right-handed thread righty-tighty lefty-loosey that simple
and then the opposite for the left-handed thread so what i'll do now is i'll take my adjustable
inch millimeter inch millimeter wrench for a left-handed or right-handed guy so here we go
the fending thread for the gas propane and the normal rowdy tidy lefty loosey for the oxygen
and of course you have the spark arrestors on there
thanks thermal cut for the spark wrestlers tip gauges and of course the nice harris torch
so we got everything connected so what i need to do is turn the tanks on so rule of thumb crack it
in a quarter turn and a lot of people don't realize but the reason why it's supposed to
be done like that it's a safety precaution that if you do have something if the line
if the hose is 100 feet away and it gets cut or something that when the person runs over here
they don't have to turn it 15 or 20 times just to get the gas to shut off so this way you just
quickly just shut it down just like that so it's just a safety precaution so that's on
and then of course the oxygen got the bottles energized
with the pressure on it and one good habit to get into is though he's taking soapy water or a
contesco oxygen gas system testing that you can use to check all your connections
so it's real simple to do you energize everything like it's already energized
and you pour it on the fittings all the screw fittings to make sure nothing's leaking
just a little dab will do you and you can do this with some dawn up got a little no i thought i had
a bubble and of course check the torch you know if you're inside and you have a leak that is not good
because you could blow up so what i'll do next is we'll get it set up and i'm gonna do a couple
don'ts and then i'm gonna fix them with the do's so hopefully this helps you ashley
so this is the case that ashley looks like she's having as you can tell on the gauges i'm really
low on the on the propane and really low on the oxygen and i was moving too fast so hopefully
this helps you ashley i hope that's what you were getting there so i showed you the mishap that we
had about traveling too fast it welded itself back together gauge is not adjusted correctly so what
i'm going to do now is i'm adjusting the gauges correctly on about 40 for the auction about six
or seven for the for the propane on a 3 8 thick plate and uh we'll see what kind of results we get
ready
you definitely want to preheat
so
that's pretty
so if you preheat it correctly take your time your speed and everything with your you
know your hand coordination and you keep really consistent you can come up with some nice quality
cuts with that just using propane and the good thing about the propane is
you can get at home depot walmart the gas station if they got you know propane tanks out there
for sale or so you know it's it's everywhere and it's cheap so and it works you can definitely see
that so what i'm gonna do next is i've got a one inch piece of steel that i'm gonna cut through
and see how i can see how good it cuts so let's get going
got a little bit of slag but um it cut through it pretty clean i mean that's that's pretty clean
as you can see too i mean it's there's a little slag on it but not much
but i guarantee it'll it'll fall right off just like that look
so the myth is you can cut with propane and guess what cook with it too
you can cut with propane who said you can't no i said the myth
that you can't cut with propane you can cut with propane yeah and cook
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