Oxygen

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4RNB

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4RNB
My new portable system was just delivered. A nearby welding shop said they won’t fill it, and if they did, it would get shipped out for two weeks and my new bottle likely would not be returned to me.

How do I get this tank filled?2BC27E8E-4B1F-416E-88D4-8D1F53F079C3.jpeg
 
Rgbeard said:
Use a different shop that doesn’t have their head up their ass.
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That.

Also, call around to medical gas people. I found one who has filled mine for $6. Some may say the same as the welding shop, so keep trying.

Edit:
It may also help to take the Aviation stickers off and to say you’re using it to aerate an aquarium.
 
Llewtrah381 said:
That.

Also, call around to medical gas people. I found one who has filled mine for $6. Some may say the same as the welding shop, so keep trying.
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Did the medical gas require a prescription?
 
4RNB said:
A nearby welding shop said they won’t fill it, and if they did, it would get shipped out for two weeks and my new bottle likely would not be returned to me.
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So, they just do cylinder exchanges and don't fill bottles themselves.
Find a shop that actually fills cylinders.
 
4RNB said:
Did the medical gas require a prescription?
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No. Mine has the CGA540 valve like yours and I let him know. That said, he also filled two medical cylinders for a friend without batting an eye.

It just depends on the vendor. One welding shop will fill mine, another won’t. The medical gas guy is a small vendor - doesn’t even have a storefront. You may just need to ask around
 
The welding shop I use fills the bottles themselves and even offers Aviators breathing oxygen as a choice over “regular”.

I always get my same bottle returned.

I go back to my original statement. Find a capable provider.
 
Rgbeard said:
and even offers Aviators breathing oxygen as a choice over “regular”.
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My understanding is it actually all comes off the same manifold where it’s produced: welding, aviation, and medical. In fact, I’ve heard the welding is actually the highest standards.

I’d be curious to know what the difference is at your shop: the Aviation is spritzed with lavender or something? :)
 
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Llewtrah381 said:
My understanding is it actually all comes off the same manifold where it’s produced: welding, aviation, and medical. In fact, I’ve heard the welding is actually the highest standards.

I’d be curious to know what the difference is at your shop: the Aviation is spritzed with lavender or something? :)
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The lavender thing was supposed to be a secret. Sssshhhh.
 
Call your local industrial gas shop (like AirGas) and see about leasing two welding oxygen tanks and set up a two cylinder cascade to fill your own. Absolutely the easiest and best way to do it. You’ll use it more often if it’s easy to fill in your hangar too.
 
We’ve been answering with pretty much non-av answers so far, which are admittedly the least expensive in most cases. But FBOs also fill them in some places. Typically it’s way more expensive - waay more. But my maintenance shop has a 2-tank cascade that he uses to fill mine for $20 (the welding shop charges $14). I’ve also had it filled for free at a mx shop while on the road. Basically, asking around is a good idea, especially at larger maintenance shops.

Also, others have mentioned cascades. Not sure where you are but maybe ask around and see if someone has a cascade in their hangar you can use. Despite the price for an aviation tank, the tall welding ones are about $20 to refill, I understand - dirt cheap.

Anyway, good luck hunting for a good source. I use it in my Warrior a surprising amount.
 
maybe the tank is shipped completely depressurized. If so it would need to be cleaned, dried, inspected before filling...maybe that's why they were going to send it off.....
 
They won't put compressed air in an oxygen bottle.....that's way on the stupid list.o_O Those guys do take their jobs seriously. they are licensed and lives are on the line with those mixes. I seriously doubt the shop you saw was using just "compressed air" to charge the dive bottles. They may use compressed air to test the bottles and valves....but they are charged with a complex mix of gases.
Rgbeard said:
be careful. Some dive shops don’t keep oxygen around but instead compressed atmospheric air
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Checkout_my_Six said:
They won't put compressed air in an oxygen bottle.....that's way on the stupid list.o_O
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can’t comment on stupidity but I called two local dive shops for oxy before I found my hookup . Both indicated that they only had compressed atmospheric air for tanks. Had I brought in my bright green cyl, they would have probably turned it away. Guessing.
 
Dive shops vary with more being trqvel oriented and less being tech unless you are by the ocean. Find a dive shop that supports tech diving, especially cave and wreck diving. Often they go to EAN40(40% oxygen) but sime dive final shallow safety stop with pure O2...I think, been a while. So they should have pure 02.

My understanding is medical O2 for patients is echange only. So easy to end up with another bottle.

I bought a medical bottle and a transfill adapter. My FBO had it filled with no questions after a bit of a wait. In my hands 20min later. But was about 3x medical fill cost. Don't use it much so NBD.
 
Retag the bottle with an Oxygen USP label instead of "aviators oxygen" (which doesn't exist). That may solve the issue, but the adapter is an aviation adapter, not a medical one, so they may be a suspicious of something odd in that regard.

It is easy enough to get you PCP doc to write a script for O2, which will make it easy to get refilled at a medical gas supplier.
 
The dive shop I use has "Aviator's" oxygen....and I mentioned it and got a long lecture about why they use it.
 
Make friends with your volunteer fire dept with EMS fill station.
 
Wherever you fill the tank, don't forget to analyze the content. That's pretty easy at a dive shop, because they all have O2 analyzers (and no, I don't know of any dive shop so sloppy that they would fill an oxygen tank with compressed air, but it helps to have the tank marked with a big 'Oxygen' sticker, as technical divers normally do to avoid mistakes). It seems to me that airplane oxygen tanks are rarely analyzed after filling, which is probably the only situation where diving is more safety oriented than aviation.
 
Brad W said:
maybe the tank is shipped completely depressurized. If so it would need to be cleaned, dried, inspected before filling...maybe that's why they were going to send it off.....
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They are normally shipped with a small amount of pressure, just to prevent contamination.
 
Rgbeard said:
can’t comment on stupidity but I called two local dive shops for oxy before I found my hookup . Both indicated that they only had compressed atmospheric air for tanks. Had I brought in my bright green cyl, they would have probably turned it away. Guessing.
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I've been out of the business for quite a while and things have changed a bit, but the training I went through to be a certified diving mixed gas blender was pretty extensive....did the visual inspections, cleaning (and that is serious for high concentration O2), filling and blending....my focus was on air, nitrox, tri-mix, and O2. It was stressed seriously, that O2 requires extremely clean everything.... must fully de-greased and cleaned...even nitrox tanks back in the days when 100% O2 was filled prior to topping up with air to blend it.

Nitrox is extremely prevalent now days...I saw it go from a tech diving thing to when it was becoming main-stream easy..... Now it seems to be almost everywhere. I can hardly imagine a dive shop not having at least some blended O2 mixes. 100% O2 though...maybe not....but they would most likely have access through their suppliers.
Now days as I understand it a lot of shops just have banks of pre-blended Nitrox. Just guessing, but smaller shops that aren't in serious diving country might not have 100% O2...and might not even be trained and certified to handle it.
 
@4RNB Was your bottle shipped depressurized? (as in 0psig...crack the valve and you don't even get a hiss....?)
 
I'm curious... what does Mountain High tell you about getting it filled?
In my background with diving tanks....an empty tank would trigger a visual inspection...AND for O2 would trigger an O2 cleaning.... cleaning of the tank and disassembly and cleaning of the valve.
 
so basically you can't just go get it filled...FBO or anywhere else. A certified tech would need to take it into the shop....
 
Jump outfit I worked at had a machine…. SUPER simple.

Not a high probability, but another possible resource.

My part 145 has a machine, we won’t fill a bottle COMPLETELY empty as we don’t have the vacuum pump to certify moisture free… of course we can’t certify someone didnt allow it to get moisture in there some time before us either… it’s all fear driven.

Do keep asking. Always be mindful of that thing freezing up. A simple routine like that becomes as natural as checking for your wallet… press on!
 
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Been thinking about just buying a cascading system and renting some welders oxygen tanks. Haven’t found any options locally to fill my system yet. Anyone have recommendations on which cascading trans fill system is best?
 
Got myself an Inogen G5. What cannulas are you guys using and if you have details on a Y split, please provide some details.
I am aware of the Winblade, but at 95$ no thankyou.
 
Brad W said:
so basically you can't just go get it filled...FBO or anywhere else.
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The ABO spec doesn’t require that… just four fill/purge cycles.

Paul
Aviatordoc said:
Got myself an Inogen G5. What cannulas are you guys using and if you have details on a Y split, please provide some details.
I am aware of the Winblade, but at 95$ no thankyou.
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I can get you the part number, but I use normal medical cannulas.

Califomia is one of two states requiring scripts for cannulas, so m8ne come from Kentucky via online ordering.

Paul
 
The oxymizer pendant style cannulas are available on Amazon for several dollars less than the usual aviation sources. I actually got my entire setup on Amazon for about $200, but it's a simple medical regulator, not a demand setup.
 
Matt Goodrich said:
Been thinking about just buying a cascading system and renting some welders oxygen tanks. Haven’t found any options locally to fill my system yet. Anyone have recommendations on which cascading trans fill system is best?
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They are pretty much the same. Some connectors, some tubing.

Buy from one of the O2 suppliers (Mountain High, Aerox, etc) or roll your own.

FYI, shorter hose loses less O2 each time.
 
Let's see. A 77 cf aviation bottle is 7.6" x 29.5" If it was a regular full cylindrical shape, that is 0.77 cubic feet.

So a full one contains 100 times the gas of an empty one. So if the air inside an empty bottle was 100% relative humidity at 20C, there would be about 18 grams of water per cubic meter or .177 grams of water. Fill with dry O2, that means a final relative humidity of less than 5%. Not a huge issue.
 
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