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Thread: Argon ain't Argon????
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24th Oct 2013, 04:10 PM #1Member
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Argon ain't Argon????
Been reading about various suppliers of argon, and the claimed purity of what they flog as "welding grade".
Air Liquide 99.99%; also does Alphagaz HP 99.995% G size; Alphagaz 1 99.999% G size
BOC (Linde) 99.995%; also does high purity grade 4.7 = 99.997% and ultra high purity = 99.999% all in multiple cylinder sizes
Coregas (presently no information published)
Speedgas 99.99%
Stargas (Elgas, Linde) 99.995%
Supagas standard 99.99%
AWS standards say welding grade is 99.995% pure. Higher purity is apparently only needed for titanium. But somehow the standards must be lower here for suppliers to flog 99.99% as welding grade. The difference between 99.99% and 99.995% is 100ppm impurities vs 50ppm impurities. Just wondering if people notice a difference with the higher impurity argon from the usual suppliers? Maybe nobody cares because we don't make anything much high tech like aircraft parts??
PS BOC UK has a single Argon Welding gas "Pureshield Argon" 99.998% pure, nothing less pure than that.
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24th Oct 2013, 05:33 PM #2Member
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BTW, if you want to know how much room you might have to negotiate on prices, check out this govt pricelist.
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24th Oct 2013, 07:56 PM #3Cba
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Argon 99.99% is also called Argon 4.0 or HP (High Purity)
Argon 99.995 is also called Argon 4.5
Argon 99.999 is also called Argon 5.0 or Ultra High Purity (UHP)
Argon 99.9999 would be Argon 6.0, unlikely to be available in Australia (would have to be i be imported for you on order), it would come with a certificate of analysis and an expiry date on it, and would require you to use a special high purity regulator on the cylinder
It is all a matter of how much you want to pay for Argon. The purer, the more expensive. If you do not know exactly why you would need to use anything better than standard welding grade, then it would just be a waste of money.
Also I would be careful with the purity specifications given for welding gases. The gas dealers know it is costly for you to verify such claims by analysis. Where purity is really mission critical, the customer requests either a batch certificate, where each cylinder serial number is listed on the analysis results, or an idividual certificate where the analysis sample must be taken exactly from the one cylinder serial number listed. Needless to say, high purity cylinders need to be evacuated and flushed several times before filling, and must be rust free on the inside (eg new or near new cylinders).
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24th Oct 2013, 08:22 PM #4Member
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Air Liquide sells a Alphagaz 2 @ 99.9995%.
Mostly, the higher purities are for analytical purposes. The particular issue with welding is that the different companies have different specifications for "welding grade", which are generally lower than AWS standards and much lower than readily available in the UK for welding.
So when comparing prices, users should be aware that the different gas suppliers have different interpretations of "welding grade" and presumably there will be a difference in results somewhere.
BOC Industrial Grade has the same purity as Air Liquide's Alphagaz HP. On the WA Govt contract price, the Alphagaz HP is cheaper than BOC Industrial Grade.
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