I am looking at the Smith mdl 550 portable oxy/acetylene torch package. The bottles are 20 cu. ft. oxy and 10 cu. ft. acetylene. Was wandering if anyone uses these and can give me an idea of how much cut time the bottles will give and a cost estimate to refill the bottles.
Thanks,
Rick

 

Bump ........

Nobody use these things or know anything about them ?

 

I haven't used the specific ones but I have a small torch set that is handy around the home and shop. I have much larger gas bottles. The gas bottles you are listing are pretty small. I would guess that if you have to do some small welding or cutting on you deer stand out in the middle of nowhere they would be good. Other wise I think they are too small. A place I worked at had something similar at the test site and it seemed like every time we went to use them they were empty.

just as a side note...do not "portable" these in and enclosed vehicle. a leak could make one big mess out of the truck.

just my opinion.

 

I have among others a smith welding torch that I use to hard braze when I do HVAC and need to take onto a roof when I change out a compressor or valve. Not sure how many cubic foot the tanks are off hand but the acetylene is I believe a "B "plumber's tank and they are about 24" tall.
I have not used them enough to refill it yet though.
Jim.
BTW I don't think you will get much cut time from 20 cu of oxygen since that is what you are using to blow the metel with.

 

I have been doing some welding on my truck (I prefer torch welding to stick, because it comes out cleaner for me)... and I have been using a 20cuft/10cuft setup without any problems... I have used about half the bottle of accetylene and maybe 1/3 of the O2... But I didn't have to do much cutting... mostly I've been pre-heating for bending and welding up soem cracks and brocken welds...

I may have to refill them when i'm done because I want to weld the ranch hand in place when I remount it... I only had it bolted on and that's what tore up my frame.

Johnny

 

I remember using my dads portable set, and by the time the steel gets hot enough to cut, the tanks about empty. Might be allright for sheet metal and brazing.

 

X2.......not enough for cutting. Ok for brazing.

 

Maybe didn't have the regs set right.. You'll have some cut time but not much.. I remember trying to cut a cracked piece of cutting edge off a Case 580 bucket and got about 5" of cut and ran out of oxy. I have the Victor portable setup and used the 10 and 20's in the beginning, I upgraded to 40-60 size cylinders and they last quite a while.. although not as portable. I modified a hand truck for the tanks. Depends on what you'll be doing with them but I would say get a full size regulator outfit and larger tanks.

 

The last group I worked with I that's all they had and I needed to do 4 branch connections on some 4 inch pipe. Marked all the pipe cut everything out. Don't know how much was left cause their guages were destroyed(that's how they gave them to me). Call your local welding supply, they can tell you about how many minutes one of those little setups will last. If it's like one of those in the plastic carry case I think about 30 minutes of cutting is what I've heard but not sure.