Acetylene torch not as hot as it was??

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WinterIsComing

Joined
Oct 10, 2018
Messages
9
Hello,

I’ve been lurking on this site for a long time. I usually find an answer to my problem with research and days of poking around the internet, but this time I can’t find anything.

So I have an air acetylene torch that I’ve used to melt copper to liquid and cast it multiple times. Well last night for some reason it just wouldn’t melt the copper to liquid. I mean, it would liquify it but only where the flame actually touched the metal, as soon as I would move the flame over to another section of the metal, the first spot solidified (and this was a small piece of metal, maybe the size of a half dollar).

I did it in the same crucible as all the other times. Literally no variable changed that i can think of except the tank might have gotten knocked around a bit in my car.

The air adjustment on the tank itself was all the way open. The acetylene level in the tank isn’t that much less than before. I can’t understand why the other day it worked fine and now it won’t melt completely.

I appreciate any help
 
You might need to blow out some of the air inlet holes. There could be some crap or maybe a spider stuck in there?
 
I do plumbing work. My rig is a small B bottle setup. I have the ability to change tip sizes. If yours is similar, when you unscrew the tip, there's a fine meshed screen below the tip. I've had mine get clogged up before causing the same issue.
Check the screen. It's not recommended to do away with the screen. It can be cleaned with a solvent like acetone.
The screen could be located at the bottom of the tip also.
 
Ajack60 said:
I do plumbing work. My rig is a small B bottle setup. I have the ability to change tip sizes. If yours is similar, when you unscrew the tip, there's a fine meshed screen below the tip. I've had mine get clogged up before causing the same issue.
Check the screen. It's not recommended to do away with the screen. It can be cleaned with a solvent like acetone.
Click to expand...
Ahh, ok thank you I wil try
 
Ok neither of these solved my problem (I do appreciate the responses though). The tip didn't have a screen when I unscrewed it, and the inlet holes seem ok.

Is it possible being sort of low on fuel could cause this? I mean I'm not much lower than I was two weeks ago when it worked fine. Also, I'm noticing now the flame also like skips or stutters when its turned upside down. It never did this before.

Just to be thorough, the attached pic shows the torch itself (NOTE* I guess since I'm not a paying subscriber I can only upload one image, so this was not the image i wanted but you can still probably get what I'm talking about). I'm assuming that is where I would find the screen if there was one, right? Also as you can see, im assuming those holes (located in the same spot) are the air intake holes right?

Thanks all for the help



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Last edited:
Ken H> said:
Low of gas? what's the pressure in the O2 tank? ACetylene tank pressure?
Click to expand...
This is not an oxy-acetylene tank. Just a regular air acetylene so there is only one tank. It was melting copper to a pourable liquid not even 2 weeks ago but now won't.

Not sure of pressure because there is no pressure gauge, only a fuel gauge as you can see.



P.s. sorry the image is upside down. Not sure how to rotate it
 
WinterIsComing said:
This is not an oxy-acetylene tank. Just a regular air acetylene so there is only one tank. It was melting copper to a pourable liquid not even 2 weeks ago but now won't.

Not sure of pressure because there is no pressure gauge, only a fuel gauge as you can see.



P.s. sorry the image is upside down. Not sure how to rotate it
Click to expand...

According to that gauge, you're out of fuel.
 
I'd try refilling the bottle. Sounds like its low or out.
 
Ajack60 said:
This is the set up I've got. You can see the screen in the tip.

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VT5t5bk.jpg
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, here is a picture of mine. Doesn’t look like a screen, just some sort of metal insert. I just don’t understand why suddenly it would not be as hot. Unless being sort of low on fuel matters that much (see my above picture)

 
IMG_20181010_150759.jpg


The long handle is a regulator handle

The tank must be opened, and the regulator turned to the right.

You should get a proper regulator and two gauge set.

If you use acetylene too fast, the tanks explode.
 
WinterIsComing said:
Thanks for the reply, here is a picture of mine. Doesn’t look like a screen, just some sort of metal insert. I just don’t understand why suddenly it would not be as hot. Unless being sort of low on fuel matters that much (see my above picture)

Click to expand...


Yes, it matters that much. As the pressure of the fuel depletes, you get more air than fuel ratio resulting in a colder flame.
It doesn't look like a screen to me either. It may not have a screen at all. Did you look in the handle assembly to see if one was somewhere in there ?
 
Fill/change the tank and I bet it works just fine.

Just a clarification to Ajack's comment - as the pressure drops in the tank you get more fuel than air in the mix ( less venturi draw of air). This makes a cooler oxygen starved flame.
 
Ok so thank you all for your advice. It seems I need a new tank.

Now I must admit something you are all going to probably not believe and you will all probably stop responding due to my stupidity.. and I am embarrassed as all hell.

So, yesterday I was suspecting that the acetylene wasn't getting enough air with it which was making the flame cooler..it was then that I noticed the air intake holes on the tip were actually all deformed. It looks as though the tip started to melt/deform from so much heat or someone ran it over by accident (my tools have been known to get run over before by girlfriend) so I thought maybe because these holes are deformed and almost caving that I should just clear them out with a drill bit. I made sure to use a drill bit that was almost an exact match of the hole size. I drilled the holes out and cleaned up the bits of metal and screwed the tip back on the torch handle.

Well when I fired it up, holy moly, just a really big orange yellow flame with black smoke coming out of it! Ahh I messed up obviously and shouldn't have messed with those holes. But the amount of metal I removed was so insignificant... And I feel like I brought the holes back to their original size... So why is the flame so drastically different?

I know it was stupid to try and drill out those holes but because I was careful to only bring them back to their original size I thought it would be ok.

Did enlarging those holes that small amount really make all the difference and change my nice blue cone flame to this orange yellow black smoke ridden flame??

Thanks all
 
This is one good reason to fill out your profile with your city and state as well as some info on yourself.
If you were near me, or many others I suspect, you wuld have been invited over to check it out. I have spare heads that I could give you to replace the messed up one, too. Because no one knows where you are, no one can offer.
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
This is one good reason to fill out your profile with your city and state as well as some info on yourself.
If you were near me, or many others I suspect, you wuld have been invited over to check it out. I have spare heads that I could give you to replace the messed up one, too. Because no one knows where you are, no one can offer.
Click to expand...

Oh I didn't realize. I was in the middle of a time sensitive project yesterday and signed up in a hurry. I don't remember seeing a screen to fill out my geographical info but I will do now.

Thank you for the advice
 
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