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I was thinking about it and I may want a second setup. Either a duplicate unit, or get an Ultrafill setup. I would do this for several reasons. If I was under high demand for oxygen, high production, I may need faster fill times. My second thought was to alternate the usage, to let one unit rest for a little while. This would reduce the wear and tear on each machine. So neither one will run 24/7. Maybe like every 36 to 48 hours, switch off? OxygenTech, What are your thoughts on this theory?
Do you do rebuild exchange?
We repair our concentrators and homefills in house for a number of problems, and mostly those with easy solutions. If a unit needs a compressor rebuild or a new sieve bed, I have a local guy to me, in Riverside county, Homecare Tech Services, who does that work for us. He works on all types of units, last time I spoke to him, he quoted me $80 for a sieve re-pour, no matter what concentrator, with quantity 8.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hollister
He does work all over the country, he was telling me about a company that was shipping him product from Delaware.
There is more value in tank than just the nipple, yes. The valves have built in conserving devices (regulators that delivery oxygen on demand). I buy the nipples separate. A homefill bottle with a tank attached would cost more than simply filling a small oxygen bottle with the CGA540 thread on it. There is no reason you could not fill one of those smaller bottles, to 2000PSI, for a more portable use.Quote:
Originally Posted by Emmett's Glass
Say, for a demonstration or trade show or something.
750 LBS @ 7:30 when I checked.
I was thinking if you had use for such things, some of us got some extra stuff when we got our homefills off craigslist.Quote:
Originally Posted by OxygenTech
E
Quote:
Originally Posted by Emmett's Glass
I would be interested!Quote:
Originally Posted by Emmett's Glass
Homefills work great! Love mine.
What happens to the water vapor in the air when it is processed by the oxygen concentrator? Does the water vapor get ejected from the machine along with the nitrogen or are we just hoping that it does not build up in appreciable quantities? I can imagine that small amounts of water would be extremely harmful, corroding away at the inside of a tank that will at times hold up to 2000 psi.
I recommend using a timer with the homefill. I do 6hrs on 30min off. cycling
And run 4 tanks in series up to 1000psi or 1250psi and it should run a long time and support a good sized torch like delta.
Good question and very well presented. Personally, my plan is to keep a couple of rented tanks and swap them out every couple of months, keeping a record of the changes on a chalk board on the wall.Quote:
Originally Posted by CoreysCollectables
Quote:
Originally Posted by styles1 torchlife
Thank you both for your answers. Styles, I like the way you are thinking. I have 4 large bottles (300's) and had a plan to do the same. I am running a Herbert Arnold 40mm and a hand torch on the side. When a friend shows up, sometimes there is a third torch in the mix. I was thinking of putting a regulator manifold at the end of the chain to allow for 2 or more regulators to use the system. In theory, it should be in one side, out the other with some shut-off valves in between... I don't want to turn another wrench again! I will know soon if one homefill or 2 would best suit my needs. I still need to daisy chain the tanks together. I will keep you posted with pics and more info as my system develops.Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by CoreysCollectables
What happens to the water vapor in the air when it is processed by the oxygen concentrator? Does the water vapor get ejected from the machine along with the nitrogen or are we just hoping that it does not build up in appreciable quantities? I can imagine that small amounts of water would be extremely harmful, corroding away at the inside of a tank that will at times hold up to 2000 psi.
Good question and very well presented. Personally, my plan is to keep a couple of rented tanks and swap them out every couple of months, keeping a record of the changes on a chalk board on the wall.
Swampy, I hear what you are saying about swapping the rental tanks. My bottles are customer owned. I still need to make one more trip back to the welding store to make sure all of my tanks are swapped out for the one's with the yellow ID Ring. This insures that the bottle is in fact customer owned and you can swap it out anywhere. If it's not painted yellow, the tank is considered "asset owned" or a rental. You can only swap them out with that company. The welding supply store gets a huge fine for taking in a bottle that isn't theirs. Sometimes they don't have all customer owned bottles filled, so they give me asset owned one's instead. Since I now have this new system and won't be seeing them for a while. I want to be sure I am not locked in to any one company in the future. Who knows, they my delete my account cuz I haven't been in, managers will change, or I may move... Something ya know.
I may want to swap my bottles out once every year or so... It's not such a bad idea for safety. Kind of like swapping out the fuel and oxy hoses every year. Some things wear out over time. I am curious to see what OxygenTech has to say about the water vapor. It poses an interesting yet potentially dangerous theory. I wonder if the tank corroded from the inside, would it just leak or eventually explode during a fill?
I think the zeolite absorbs a lot of the moisture in the incoming air. I wouldnt be that worried unless I was in a high humidity area but would swap my bottles once or twice a year.
Just a heads up for everyone, you can have whips and hoses, swivels ect. Put together at any hose warehouse that will make hydraulic hoses while you wait.
Drew figured this out... And it is a easy way to get the job done safely and cheaply.(AND SAVED ME SOME TIME)
Why not just put in a small inline air dryer with blow down valve like most people use with large air compressor setups? Place it in between the oxycons and homefill unit. Shit do they make air dryers for pure oxygen? Time for more online education I guess.
I make no claims to figureing this out lots of people did this before me just in a different way. I just had an affordable supply of homefill II's.Quote:
Originally Posted by styles1 torchlife
Sorry for thread jacking
Just a little update... I have been filling my bottles one at a time while I search for the best pricing for the rest of the fittings. It is going painfully slow. I calculated out the fill rate and OxygenTech was right. It fills at 1.97 LPM (that's the 2LPM that he quoted earlier). Unfortunately this means that running the Homefill continuously will only fill 3 bottles a week (300's). It was taking just about 55 machine hours to fill 1 tank from bottom to top. I was getting faster fill rates after the 500psi mark but slows down after 1500psi. It seems to go faster from 500 to 1000 than it does 0 to 500. I guess it needs some preasure to build on. So don't completely empty your tanks. There's really nothing to take pics of just yet cuz you've seen it all before, one bottle, one homefill... I will post some pics once I have my other fittings in place. Because of the painfully slow fill rates, I am going back to get another Homefill from OxygenTech. I use 3 to 4 bottles a week without thinking about it... I need to be producing the stuff at a slightly faster rate than I am using it, and have enough stored on the back-end to support a full day's work every day... I'll keep working on it and get back to you.
BTW: I talked with OxygenTech on the phone the other day and we discussed some of the questions I had proposed on this site. He said that it depended on the relative humidity of the environment. I live next to the ocean and we do see fog from time to time. He assured me that this would most likely not be much of a problem. However, if I was concerned with this, I could get a vacuum and suck out any moisture from the system every 6 to 12 months. We talked about Minerdude's dryer idea, and he said that was a nice creative solution as well. We also talked about the normal wear and tear of these machines, that is 3 to 4 hours a day. As glass workers, we push them hard to keep up with our usage.
Much love and many blessings,
~ Corey M.
Oh and for the people that care about the #'s
1 bottle (300CUF) @ 55h (WTF!)
Average Life of Homefill: 6000h
Homefill Full @: 2000psi
Average bottles per Homefill: 100
Amortized cost of Homfill: $6/btl
Cost of electricity @ $0.11 Kw/h: $3/btl
Total Cost Per Bottle: $9/btl
This math isn't exactly perfect... I gave averages to make it easier to read, but you get the idea. I was spending $20/btl plus tax and fees. Then abut a 40mi round trip to go trade the suckers out. I am easily saving half of my oxygen monies! Let's just see how long this thing lasts. I have seen some of the other oxygen compressors out there and they are a bit more expensive, however could be worth the investment. Looking into the one from Hong Kong that I saw in another thread. Pricey thou. The homefills are defiantly an affordable way to get into the OxyCon game!
Running Constantly, the Homefill will reach 6000h in just a little under a year!
This is why I want to get 2 and switch off the usage... Keeping the pressure down around 1000 to 1500 will hopefully prolong their life a little bit as well.
There are many options out there for oxygen... you just got to find the one that fits your glass schedule and usage.
Good one. Thanks for doing the maths, it's a lot clearer to see the benefit. Especially like how I pay US$45 per 220 cu ft tank, soon I'll have the system set up here.
It says;
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to CoreysCollectables again.
Thanks for the Reps Swampy! Much appreciated as I am just getting started here. If your usage is low, 1 Homefill will do, but if you blow glass for a living on a serious torch, then get 2 homefills. This is what I am learning. OxygenTech is going to figure out if I will need a second OxyCon or of 1 OxyCon will be able to run 2 homefills. If so I could save a little money on the OxyCon. I will get back to you with more info later.
I am glad that my experience is helping others. It was Metalbone's hard work years ago that I was reading thru and discovered that I wanted to try the homefill solution. We are all standing on the backs of giants. Thanks to everyone that makes this forum possible and everyone that participates. You are doing the glass community a great service!
Much love and many blessings,
~ Corey M.
It's true, we all benefit huge from all that has been done and recorded here. But there's still tons to add, all the time.
I really appreciate you putting those numbers up, it's very clear to see the benefit. Thanks man!
Has anyone got 6000 hours out of one of these things? I think that is a little far fetched. I think they are well worth the money though regardless just in time you save in transporting tanks or waiting on oxy if they close on the weekends.Quote:
Originally Posted by CoreysCollectables
curious if anyone can give me some help. I have an ex2000 compressor, same as the homefill from what I am reading. It is given to me as a loner while I ship mine off, but i need to make it work..everything is great it comes on...3 minutes into it the pump turns on ...I can feel a small amount of air pressure coming from the the hose that connects to the tank..it does build slightly, but doesn't fill or build pressure that the regulator shows...
I am suspicious of a sound coming from the area of the closest large white cylinder...maybe an air leak...I am not sure though...if it is only this cylinder..anyone know where I may find a replacement?
Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Without trying to hijack the thread, I ran across this link for service manuals on several oxy cons. Not usually provided to consumers. Hope it helps someone.
http://www.frankshospitalworkshop.co...e_manuals.html
Stephen
:DHey Guys, sorry for the hiatus, been crazy at work. The good news is I did get to run a number of experiments with different homefill units and concentrator combinations, and we have a winner.
The two obstacles I was trying to overcome, as relayed to me by Corey and a few other people who have purchased homefills to fill their own large tanks was
1) reduce overall run time of the unit. The idea being shortened run times will last to equipment longevity.
2) increase the speed of fill.
To tackles these problems we started with a single concentrator and single homefill option, looking to see if we could get better performance from the most basic set up.
1) Knowing we get a max of 5 LPM out of a 5LX and 2 LPM of the 5 LPM are directed to the back homefill filling port, we looked to add some of the remaining 3 LPM coming out of the front of the unit. Well, we cannot. :bangHead::bangHead: Firstly, the front unit is set to a pressure of 5.5 PSI typically, and though we can adjust the pressure of the unit up, we are going to hit a road block. Even if we managed to get the pressure above 15 PSI we could not successfully add to the homefill ports oxygen for a couple reasons, the main reason being the unit's auto shut off. If the front port is occluded, as in the hose to a patient was kinked or pinched, the back-pressure building up inside the tubing will auto shut off the concentrator. So even with a 15 PSI one way valve, the unit would shut off.
2) How about running the one concentrator with 2 homefills? :bangHead::bangHead: Nope. That was a quick experiment. The pressure coming out of the back of the 5 LX has to be between 15 and 21 PSI in order for the homefill to operate. both homefills would start to pump, but would quickly alarm to oxygen below normal. Neither homefill unit could keep enough oxygen to operate correctly.
3) How about 2 homefills and 2 concentrators. Well sure, that worked great, as you would expect we improved on the time to fill our dummy H tank significantly from a single homefill and concentrator. Both the concentrators homefill ports were linked together in a effort to equalize the pressures between the needs of the 2 homefills and the output of the 2 concentrators.:D:D
4) For our last experiment to date, and the best outcome by far so far, we used a combination of 3 concentrators and 2 homefills. :evilLaugh:evilLaugh The thought was that as the homefill is filling in it's acceptable PSI range of 15-21, there must be a greater performance reached at a fill of 21 PSI than a fill of 15 PSI. But what is that the difference. By adding a 3rd concentrator to the mix, we are not increasing the pressure, we are still only at 15-21 PSI attained as the sieve beds cross over, but now, we have added more volume, more mass, with the introduction of the 3rd concentrator. So, in theory, we can be closer to the maximum pressure of 21 PSI inside the homefill intake more often and for longer periods, which will give us better performance. Well, it did. as of the first 7 hours we put in 800 lbs. With the smaller type of tanks like this unit is designed to fill, the first part of the fill always seems to go slowest. That is, the from 0-500 seems to take forever. Once you past that point, the unit typically seems to gain speed in the fill. We noticed the same result for our filling experiment of 3 and 2. As of 12:00 noon we were at 800 PSI, now less than 30 minutes later we are pushing 900 PSI.
****BINGO*****
The next logical experiment would be to use 2 concentrators and one homefill. I expect to get similar results at a minimum. The question becomes one of economics at some point. How many homefill / concentrator combo's do you want to run, how much oxygen do you use? With 2 concentrators and on homefill, you are putting all that extra mass into one unit, where with 3 concentrators and 2 homefills, you are splitting the mass between 2 filling systems.
To connect the concentrators together we used brass airline t valves from PetCo and connected them with black airline tubing. The tubing is not the most durable, and I used it out of necessity. If I were making some more permanent set up, I think I would find similarly durable hose as the Invacare supplied tubing.
There are 2 types of Invacare homefill tubing, straight, and a thinner curled tubing. For our experiment we used the thinner curled tubing as I simply could not find enough brass T-Vales in the diameter of the Invacare straight tubing.
Make sure you clean your brass T, and wash your tubing in simple green or something similar to remove any oil. ...Best practices you know!
I'll include some picture of our rig as we have it.
If currently have a homefill set up, you may look to soup it up a bit by adding another concentrator.
Cheers!
So, H tank filled in 15 hours.
Right on, digging the experimentation. I dunno if the info helps but I am running 2 homefills of of a single 20psi 8lpm airsep newlife intensity. To run the system I disconnect the oxycon from the compressors and power them all on for about 10 minutes to let them all warm up. Once they are warm I connect the hose from the oxycon to the compressors and both compressors kick on and start filling 2 K tanks. I am not sure how long it takes to fill as I just turn the system on when I start working and turn it off or leave it over night depending on how much oxy was used. There is a CC and a Phantom utilizing the oxy in my shop.
That's great information, thanks for sharing. I'm going to be experimenting with all the concentrators I have now. I like that the Newlife is not causing you a problem when your attached to the oxygen port. The Invacare 5lx's don't like when pressure builds up too much, they beep and shut down. I just got off the phone with another glass blower and I'm going to try an inline 20 psi relief valve to see what else I may be able to get working. It would be great to run a single 10 LPM concentrator at only 10 amps and quickly fill a tank. Results to be posted later.
Anyone with experience using an AirSep 8 LPM machine @ 20 psi to fill a homefill? That is where we are headed now as far as experiment. If someone already has it finished, and can share your design, that would be great.
Yo Oxy Tech I neeed bearings bad ASAP can you help??// all 3 center bearings main crank shaft fo shooo,, the r6 groved top bearing also ,, and bottom if ya have it ,, ,, im outa commish for bit,,, locked up on friday,,,now im just sittn round smokin.. prob link up 3 or 4 of these oxy cons till i get parts..
thx CriP
oh ya I been T'ed off 2 5lpm invis runnin 3.5 lpm ea,, was workin great doooooh
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/34655061/IM...805_232810.jpg
OK, where are you located?
I can probably get you parts from a junk unit.
PM me.
Awesome thx u and I'm in Slo county like 4 he's north of you... pm now...
How much do you sell individual whips for?
Do you still have any homefill stations left? I am really interested in buying one if you still have some or know where to get a decently priced one
Instead of resurrecting a 1.5 year old thread, i'd start here if i were you:
http://www.talkglass.com/forum/showt...fills-for-sale
Do you still have these available?
I do, they are just more expensive, now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheyetalkglass
IN demand for healthcare.
How much is a complete set including the whip cost shipped? very interested.
I'm not sure if we started the vendor badge thing before this thread or after, but looks like you'll need one if you want to offer these to people here. It's easy, just pm me info customers would need to contact you outside the forum. Name, phone number, address, email, websites if you have them. thanks :)
depends on how many total you would want.Quote:
Originally Posted by PyroChixRock
A 2 concentrator to one homefill is good.
a 3 concentrator to 2 homefills is best.
Low hour and or refurbished concentrators (new sieve beds, new compressor valves, and new 4 way valve)
are $500 each
Homefill units are $850.
Whip is $100
shipping is my cost, which is for the most part cheap, as i ship a lot.