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, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (Nicknelsonleeds) enlightened us thusly:
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 enlightened us thusly:
dunno really, not had exeprience of BOC. ISTR Air products being less fussy then BOC over bottle storage and so on.
I use AP because they have outlet at my local calor gas dealer.
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
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.
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, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (M0bcg) enlightened us thusly:
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.
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
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
"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).
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