Getting Started With An Oxy Acetylene Torch Set Up

First and foremost is safety and maintenance of equipment. Whether you're putting together a new torch set up or preparing to cut and / or weld always do a good visual inspection of bottles, regulators, hoses and the torch. All caps must be on when changing out an empty bottle or transporting one for storage. (1) There is over two thousand (2000) PSI in a freshly filled cylinder. If the valve were to get broken off, it could kill you, or do serious bodily injury! If you were lucky enough to avoid injury you would have a lot of money to dish out in property damage. So do yourself a favor and always keep caps on and chains secure.

Let's walk through the steps one by one starting with the oxygen bottle. With the bottle on the cart and chain in place you can remove the cap and crack the valve to blow any dust and contaminants out. As you grab the oxygen regulator you should inspect the tapered sealing surface on the regulator and the main cylinder valve. (2) Make sure that they are free of both damage and most importantly grease / petroleum based product. The high-pressure movement of the oxygen going out of the valve into the regulator when the valve is opened can cause extreme heat. If there is grease or oil on the area between the valve and regulator it will ignite and cause what they call regulator burn out. This can and will do severe bodily injury. This is why you always open the value slowly and stand to one side when opening the valve. (3) You should do this with all types of gas and size cylinders, so you stay in good habits.

Here are a few more things that you should before installing the regulators on the cylinder valves. As you may have noticed already you can not interchange the acetylene and oxygen regulators. (4) The acetylene has left hand threads to prevent this from happening, you can identify this by the groove cut into the nut. (5) All fuel/acetylene fitting will have this groove in them. Also all the fitting are made of soft copper that can be damaged very easily, correct size wrenches and torque should be used.

After both regulators are installed, the valves/knobs on the torch body must be closed. Making sure to stand to one side you can now open the main cylinder valves slowly. Open the main cylinder acetylene valves just enough to get pressure on the gauge. (6) The reason for this is in the event of a fire you could close the acetylene (fuel) valve more quickly. Now on to the oxygen, with cylinder pressure showing on the regulator depress the bypass lever/oxygen lever on the cutting torch head and set line pressure by turning the regulator pressure screw in, then let off the bypass lever. (7)

Repeat the same for the acetylene regulator. Set the pressure to thirty-five (35) PSI on the oxygen and five (5) PSI on the acetylene. Acetylene is a very unstable gas and should not exceed fifteen (15) PSI. This can be seen on the face of the line pressure gauge. These pressures are good for a variety of uses with the oxy torch.

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