Aluminium welding

[Aussie Mike]

Hi Tenrocca,

Certainly sounds like you have a leak. I'm not familiar with the disposable bottles. Are you running a regulator?

The best way to find leaks is a squeezy bottle of soapy water. Squirt it arround the joints and your along your hoses and bubbles will appear when you find a leak.

I have 2x E size bottles for my welding kit. They are about 1.2 metres tall and about 25CM in diameter. One is straight Argon for the TIG welder and for the MIG when I do Aluminium. The other is Migshield which is a mix of Argon and CO2.

Unfortunately you can't own your own bottles in Australia any more and you have to rent them from the gas supplier. The prices have been jumping up a bit in the last few years. When I first got the MIG about 14 years back it cost me about $230 for a 5 year lease on one bottle. These days they only let you do a yearly lease and it costs about $115 a year per bottle.

A refill of Argon is about $80 from memory and the migshield M1 is less. I go through about a bottle a year at my current work rate but I'm pretty stingy with the gas. I usually run the Migshield at about 7litres/minute inside and a bit higher if there's any wind or strong draf. th TIG needs les gas at about 3 or 4 litres/minute but you are welding for longer so I guess it evens out. I recently bought a gas lense for the TIG which makes a more concentrated gas shield andI think it uses a bit less gas.

So it's an expensive option to rent bottles and maybe disposables at $35 a pop is not a bad way to go if you don't use the machine a lot.

Cheers