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Replace aluminum tanks after 10 years? All tanks will eventually fail? Well ya I’m sure they will but we regularly see industrial gas cylinders come in that are from the teens and twenties. My tanks should out live me.
The accidents and DOT safety bulletin are why shops won’t fill older aluminum tanks. It was an alloy issue though, not an age issue. There’s no reason to run out and unload tanks just because they happen to be 10 years old.
Replace aluminum tanks after 10 years? All tanks will eventually fail? Well ya I’m sure they will but we regularly see industrial gas cylinders come in that are from the teens and twenties. My tanks should out live me.
Does the writer mean fail hydro I wonder? I've got a steel 72 from 1968 that failed to return to normal size after hydro test. It looks fine but it's NG. Maybe industrial tanks don't get filled and refilled as many times as scuba tanks?
I have other steel tanks from the 60s, 70s and 80s that are still going strong. I just scraped a bad alloy AL tank I had from the 80's a few weeks ago. That had passed hydro but the one LDS that would fill closed down.
And how about not storing tanks full?!? What does that mean storage for a week or a decade? My tanks are all kept filled because I'm not running to LDS every time I want to go diving.
The explosion was roughly equivalent to several sticks of dynamite. According to one scuba tank inspection expert, "The explosive potential in a fully charged 80cf aluminum SCUBA cylinder is approximately 1,300,000 foot pounds -- enough to lift a typical fire department hook-and-ladder truck over 60 feet in the air!", stated by A. Dale Fox on his web page. Yikes!
A few file photos of ruptured tanks. The one on the right is a 400cuft tank, that must have been loud!
Hydrodynamic test every 5 years. I sure wouldn't want to fail that and find I have extra hydrodynamic drag underwater.
Every tank will fail? Once the sun envelopes the earth I am sure every tank will fail at that time. The human species will be long gone by then despite our best efforts.
References; www.scubabomb.(I could care less after seeing that as a reference)
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