You know this feeling-you have made good progress on the weekend project, you are really at your best, and things are going well. Until you run out of That One Thing™, which you can’t live without, the only store that sells it is closed. When your progress hits the virtual brick wall, you will suddenly be whipped.

Of course, every challenge has a chance to bypass it, and this is how [Lucas] finally built this carbon dioxide generator. The "IG" in MIG welding stands for "inert gas", which fills the weld pool and prevents the molten metal-the "M" in MIG-from rapidly oxidizing and destroying the weld. Welders usually use direct CO2 or a mixture of CO2 and argon as the MIG shielding gas. They usually get it from a commercial gas supplier, usually on non-weekends.

[Lucas] turned to elementary school chemistry for his carbon dioxide generator, which uses the violent reaction of baking soda and vinegar to produce gas. The first edition is rough because everyone has left. Due to the use of ABS piping, the second iteration still has some sketch elements, but the inclusion of a safety valve should prevent the worst from happening. After some fiddling with how to combine the reagents in a controlled manner, [Lucas] was able to generate enough carbon dioxide to put down a decent bead-a small one of course, but the video below shows that it works.

Can this be extended to actual use? maybe not. But it's nice to see what is possible, and can prepare something for rainy days. Maybe [Lucas] can use this method to produce carbon dioxide for his homemade laser tube. But again, it may not be.

Citric acid tends to be better and more stable than vinegar. If necessary, you can mix them into a powder before activating it with water.

I like this best. It is important for children to learn to imagine and test ideas. I was immediately put off a bit because he didn't repeatedly add baking soda to 8 ounces of vinegar at first, and noticed that there were no more bubbles to determine the ratio, but he didn't have a clue when he started playing. When he finally did this, he went to the Internet. :>( The children should be shown more knowledge of mathematics. The third grade students can follow the project of the sixth grade students to learn, if not, the sixth grade will be enough to correctly demonstrate all the content here.

Side note; old fire extinguishers use this method. The baking soda is placed in the basket above the liquid. The inversion unit is mixed. In their case, only enough pressure was needed to force the vinegar-water mixture to drain. For these fire extinguishers, CO2 does this is a very small advantage.

I offer A, B or C, depending on the elementary grade student he wants to reach. But, I like it, in these ranges. 5 points are used to demonstrate welding applications. 3 is original. 2. As a fun factor.

Agricultural vinegar is also stronger. A smaller mixing chamber is required. His may be right...

Knowledge: "IG" stands for inert gas. CO2 is an active gas. This is why the process is officially called GMAW, which is used for gas metal arc welding.

A key element of high-quality gas is purity. This includes drying to a few parts per million or higher, and no other hydrogen-producing pollutants reach a few parts per million or higher. This setting is indeed impossible to achieve. What if I am building a car body without worrying about perfect welding? that's it. Are there structural welds? Do not.

"Can this be scaled up to something practical?" No. Not without more trouble. The acid residue alone is enough to be a problem.

^ This, many amateur welders here use "bar gas"-raw carbon dioxide for carbonated drinks-because it is cheaper than the proper argon/carbon dioxide mixture (Argoshield), but there is a good reason, professionals and The industry uses proper welding gas instead of cheaper carbon dioxide.

In addition, as a friend said, if you start using CO2, Argoshield seems to magically make you a better welder.

I repaired a damaged garbage bin for a local garbage collection company to pay for college expenses. The way one of the old full-time staff explained to me is that it depends on what is being manufactured. Carbon dioxide (C100) increases weld penetration compared to Argon/CO2(C25) mixes and produces a lot of spatter, but it can also better "clean" paint and metal corrosion. So it is usually used in industrial equipment and items that do not need to be beautiful, such as trash bins.

C25 produces a more beautiful weld, with significantly reduced spatter and a smaller penetration depth, which can be compensated by using a higher voltage. I think the increase in cost will be offset by the reduction in man-hours to clean up the spatter.

There are other differences, including weld metal hardness and ductility, wet penetration, and appearance are a factor, but in most cases it is not a major factor. Carbon dioxide is actually only contained in steelmaking gas. Other materials, such as aluminum, cannot be welded to CO2 at any level.

A large amount of metal is put in with direct CO2. Impure CO2, especially contaminated by acid or water, is not suitable for welding. The gas used for the beverage may or may not be suitable, depending on the source. Gas for paintball guns, ibid. But I will not take risks. There is no real purity standard, as long as it is not toxic.

Oxygen is also very interesting. For example, medical oxygen is generally not suitable for oxy-acetylene work. It may be as low as 95%, where N2 and H2O are different,

A lower percentage of argon smoothes the arc, reduces spatter, and reduces hardness. At a higher level, it allows switching to transmission modes other than short arcs. The lower lever allows ball transfer, higher level of alloy spraying, which allows very high deposition rates, ductile deposits and very little cleaning.

Okay, so the youtube embed must have changed, because before I could touch and scroll on my phone without automatically loading and playing the video, now it's like a mine waiting to explode.

Is this true, or am I just becoming an old man? If this is true, did anyone voluntarily make this choice, or is it an urgent attribute of any spam update that we have recently become victims?

I am using a mobile phone and the video is not playing. Of course, we may have different mobile phones, different operating system versions, and so on.

But this is not a global change in YouTube.

Bah, then I blame Apple. safari/ios 14.8/iphone se 2016

I want to know why dry ice and heaters are not used, because this can control how much gas is produced.

He looked at the storage room, and all the dry ice was gone.

The nearby grocery store sells dry ice and is open on weekends.

I have never seen dry ice with my own eyes in my life, so YMMV. Yes, I can order some, but not on weekends, and I have to drive more than an hour to get to the nearest big city.

Dry ice in the grocery store? forget it.

Where do you live and the grocery store does not sell dry ice? Have you ever asked?

There are now 3 grocery stores in my area, and I have bought dry ice at each store in the past. I used to live in some small towns, but if there are chain grocery stores in the town, they can guarantee to put dry ice in the front small refrigerator at the checkout.

I was interested the first time I saw a dry ice cooler at a nearby grocery store—I never saw it when I lived in the East, but in Idaho, dry ice is a big seller for hunters and others. I want to look at the cooler and see how the dry ice is packed-cubes? Particles? So I lifted the lid of the cooler, only to see the mist. I moved my head a little closer and blew away the fog, and I got a wave of carbon dioxide. Stupid move-the rest of the day feels terrible. Learned knowledge.

My projects always encounter the blockade of "no one is handy". Sometimes shops are closed, which is a frustrating opportunity to develop and learn patience. Sometimes making one on a lathe is faster (perhaps more fun) than driving to the store. A series of decisions in this area.

I just bought a truckload of boxes full of circuit boards and threw them in the yard (for now). This is the desert of Arizona, and a little rain will not harm them for most people. I don't know how I lived without them. It seems that every other day I go to the pile to find a part.

My SO calls it "Crazy Professor Aesthetics"

With the Kipp device, the on-demand flow regulation of CO2 generation has been solved a century or more ago; think of marble chips on one side of an oversized U-shaped tube with a gas outlet on it. If the gas demand drops, the gas pressure will push the acid under the debris, and the excess acid will flow back into the other U-shaped tube arm. The glass we use in the chemical laboratory is more beautiful in architecture, but works on the same principle. But it is not conducive to pressurization.

One or two bags of garden lime (CaCO3) can reduce the price of the ingredients by half, and there have been suggestions to use agricultural vinegar. Lime for construction is not good, no matter it is uncured (CaO) or matured (Ca(OH)2), there is no carbon dioxide. It is not only a required base, but also a carbonate.

For myself, I can dig chalk from my garden, where calcium carbonate is provided for free. Smash it to speed up the reaction. I want to find some malt vinegar in the pantry in a pinch.

Agree with the above statement about using CO2 for welding first, but it is sufficient for welding where absolute strength is not important

You can concentrate your acetic acid (vinegar) by freezing, let it freeze almost completely, and then the acetic acid will solidify first and then filter it out.

If you think carbon dioxide is inert, try to inhale it through your nose, and the resulting reaction will immediately make you feel that you are wrong. Therefore, CO2 welding is not actually MIG, it is MAG (as for "active gas")

My first thought on "home-made welding gas" was to make acetylene and how to do it without exploding. I used to refill welding tanks in a scrap yard, and used a very large and very old acetylene generator to refill these tanks on site. I think some very special compressors or other equipment are needed to put them into the tank under high pressure. It is dissolved in acetone. Oxygen and other gases come from gas suppliers.

A retro technical article on the acetylene generator, and how the gas that likes KABOOM is put into the tank at a higher pressure when compressed to 15 PSI or higher, this will be a good thing to see on HaD article.

It is also my idea. I think the key to safely filling the C2H2 into the tank is to proceed slowly so that it has time to dissolve in the acetone without too much pressure. I once saw a picture of a device that transfers C2H2 from one storage tank to another. This is a very thin-almost capillary-tube. The explanation is that this prevents (or only reduces the risk?) explosive decomposition.

Ask anyone at a shipyard about gas. If the ventilation is not good, it will scare you. Oxygen will cause a very bad situation. Share your life, including your wife, children and dog Amen brothers, it will kill Damn you, be careful of your back

A CO2 (or nitrogen) concentrator is also an option, which is cheaper in the long run. If it can be run to fill the tank between welding sessions, it does not need to have a high flow rate.

Nitrogen or oxygen concentrators are useful only because their concentration in the air is quite high in the first place. carbon dioxide…

Instead of using sodium bicarbonate and acid, put a large block of dry ice in the container. There is no problem of pollutants. The container has pressure regulation.

I have been using an old medical oxygen tank (as good as 3k psi) and a few pounds of dry ice to weld forever. Even in the store in the middle of Arizona summer, I have never seen more than 2k psi in the water tank and the ambient temperature must exceed 150°.

You must replace the O-rings on the Teflon gasket and regulator more frequently. Even so, I have saved myself thousands of dollars in the past few years. In Fry, less than 1/4 mile from my house, dry ice is $3 per pound.

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