Anybody else hearing this at work, or is this only a Michigan thing? We literally can't get acetylene now.
Some story about 1 company in the US producing it, some new propane stuff being available, and some go green stuff that will be available soon, but isn't quite ready.
Here's the deal: the plant that produces most of this regions calcium carbide was located in Kentucky. A few weeks back, they suffered a massive explosion, halting production. Since acetylene is the by product of water and calcium carbide: no acetylene. We (Airgas) have put acetylene on a 70% allocation. We are trying to convert most users to propane & propylene (mapp gas), but this will not work in every case. It's going to worse before it gets better!
Hasn't affected us on the west coast yet. I just got three bottles from our local airgas today. ?? Hope it doesn't hit us out here, I am just starting a decent sized job, lots of copper pipe that we use B tanks to solder
In the Northeast,My Airgas supplier is trying to switch everyone to Ametaline gas.600 degrees hotter than acetylene.More stable on its own and is non toxic to breathe.The torches use a similar tip to Propane,but require a hoses of a different material as it will leak through the regular oxy/acetylene setup.We just got the equipment last week but have not yet used it.I will report back in this thread when i do.
That explosion happened Mar 23rd. One of my guys sent me an email on 4/9 asking if we're going to be affected. So far, I haven't seen any negative impact. I'm not sure where ours comes from though. Here's the story: http://www.wave3.com/story/14310492...talks-about-future-of-company-after-explosion
I buy 50 bottles or more a week, our supplier told us there is an alternative process to make acetylene and there should be no problem. They are charging me a $0.019 surcharge per cubic foot, though. I've heard great things about propane, but it has always been from salesmen.
I ran a great big oxy-propane torch at the junkyard in high school. It worked fine, but I can't really compare because I wasn't buying the gas, and I've never run an oxy-acetylene torch anywhere near that big. It was a blast.
My wife runs the office for a welding / machine shop. They get all their supplies from Airgas, she got a call from the local store manager a few days after it happened giving them a heads up. " The price is gonna be going up and may get to the point that we just can't get it "
We are still good at the moment here in South Carolina. We will just use our plazma cutters, so screw the oxy-ace set-up.
