VIP on AL cylinders = stupid $$$ game

[Rick Murchison]

You made my point, either the shop rat needs another job or the tank owner/diver needs to help the shop rat do his job or do it for him. Vis the rental tanks all you want. I make damm sure no water gets in my personal tanks. I vis them myself and never found water and I have owned most of them 35+ years.

Yes we agree. The lesson we're both illuminating is that as a tank owner it is up to you to make sure you get a clean fill. At the least you need to blast your own valves to make sure they are delivered to the fill station clean. As a tank user it is up to you to make sure the valve is clear of contaminants before hooking up your reg, be it your own tank or a rental.
However... as for never getting any water in your tanks, you've been lucky as well as careful (so have I). The last instance of water in a tank I know of was from an internal failure of the water separator on a compressor that occured during a fill - at one of central Florida's most reputable gas stations.
Rick

 

[ams511]

Phil, Thank you for the time it took to write this informative post. I agree with you on the 6361 cylinders, I see a bunch of them on ebay. However, do we really know if they are from penny pinchers or from divers who have since moved on from the hobby and have these old tanks lying around? Some of the divers who have given up the hobby may not even know the tanks are troublesome. However, I strongly disagree with your sympathy for those shops unwilling or unable to invest the $1,200 to $1,800 for the equipment to test the cylinders correctly. These shops should either close or not offer the service, rather than spread rumors about the tank and refuse to do fills. It is not unusal for a diver to spend that amount on his or her equipment, I would expect the diver shop to do the same.

 

[in_cavediver]

Phil, Thank you for the time it took to write this informative post. I agree with you on the 6361 cylinders, I see a bunch of them on ebay. However, do we really know if they are from penny pinchers or from divers who have since moved on from the hobby and have these old tanks lying around? Some of the divers who have given up the hobby may not even know the tanks are troublesome. However, I strongly disagree with your sympathy for those shops unwilling or unable to invest the $1,200 to $1,800 for the equipment to test the cylinders correctly. These shops should either close or not offer the service, rather than spread rumors about the tank and refuse to do fills. It is not unusal for a diver to spend that amount on his or her equipment, I would expect the diver shop to do the same.

I actually side on the shops here. Whether there is a substantial risk or not, the economics don't make sense. Given that the 6061 alloy doesn't need eddy current test, why would a shop invest $1200 bucks to do a handful of 6351 tanks? It would be cheaper for many low volume shops to simply buy the customer a new tank than to buy the machine! Given the fact that many low volume shops don't want to service that gear (6351 tanks), they don't have to fill it either. Is the tank worthless - well no. You can always do you own fills or take it to a shop who is comfortable handling it/testing it etc. Is it convienent - Nope but that not the shops fault. The shop follows its own buisness model with services it is willing to offer. They don't *have* do anything for you. (even if you did buy it from them 10 years ago)

Realize this is coming from someone who is buy no means a LDS booster.

 

[fire_diver]

..... Given that the 6061 alloy doesn't need eddy current test, why would a shop invest $1200 bucks to do a handful of 6351 tanks? .....

Handfull? Have you looked at Ebay lately? Go look at how many 6351 tanks are selling on there every day. Even though paintball fillers might be buying some, the vast majority are divers. Someones vis-ing and filling these.

FD

 

[Scared Silly]

I was just down at my local hydro facility here in Salt Lake City. We got to talking about 6351 cylinders and SLC. He said take a look at this Luxfer cylinder from 1983. It had two SLCs in the neck. He failed it without doing to hydro.

As for the shops not wanting to buy equipment to do eddy current tests. That is fine as the hydro shops will have one because the only time the eddy current test will be REQUIRED is for 6351 cylinders and that will be only at the time of hydro. So any shop buying one is wasting their money and passing that on to the customer.

That said if I did have a 6351 cylinder I would probably have and eddy current tested more often. Not sure what I would do if I owned a shop.

Also when you get your cylinder hydro'd it also gets a visual by the hydro tester. That is included by in the price of the hydro test. However, they do not put a sticker on the cylinder because the hydro stamp is proof of the visual. But I doubt that many shops will fill it without the sticker. So you pay for another visual by the dive shop.

BTW for all the whining and cheesing going on it is my understanding that in Australia and New Zealand scuba tanks must be inspected and requalified (including a hydrostatic retest) annually.

 

[Rick Murchison]

As for the shops not wanting to buy equipment to do eddy current tests. That is fine as the hydro shops will have one because the only time the eddy current test will be REQUIRED is for 6351 cylinders and that will be only at the time of hydro. So any shop buying one is wasting their money and passing that on to the customer.

Good grief. I just inspected a tank with serious stress fractures in the threads. It was only a matter of time AND it was fresh outta hydro.

Those pesky facts... I'm with Al; I'll check 6351 tanks with the eddy current myself, thank you...
Rick

 

[dbombtek]

...............










Some people believe in God, im not one of them, others think we evolved from apes, im not one of them.

 

[in_cavediver]

Handfull? Have you looked at Ebay lately? Go look at how many 6351 tanks are selling on there every day. Even though paintball fillers might be buying some, the vast majority are divers. Someones vis-ing and filling these.

FD

Remember, E-bay is international. For the sake of convience, let say its just the US. Then lets say there are 400 tanks/year sold. Assume even distrobution which would maximize the numbers for a 'low volume' area/shop - then each state would see a measly 8 tanks. Now, if there is 8 dive shops in each state, then each shop would see 1 of those tanks per year. You can adjust the distrobution all you want but there really is a finite number of those tanks out there and they are declining each year.

This is the problem of the economics. To pay for the eddy machine, assume you charge +$10 purely to recoup that, you would have to do 120 visuals for full payback of the initial investment. If you wanted a 2 year pay back, you'd have to do 60 tanks/year. Do you really think *every* shop out there would see that many tanks?
There are some shops serving the larger area's that would see those numbers (or at least very close) and they do have the eddy current machines.

 

[fire_diver]

Remember, E-bay is international. For the sake of convience, let say its just the US. Then lets say there are 400 tanks/year sold. Assume even distrobution which would maximize the numbers for a 'low volume' area/shop - then each state would see a measly 8 tanks. Now, if there is 8 dive shops in each state, then each shop would see 1 of those tanks per year. You can adjust the distrobution all you want but there really is a finite number of those tanks out there and they are declining each year.

Ummmmmm, NO! I am only addressing US-to US 6351 tank sales. 400 a year? try closer to 400 a month. It may even be more than that. It seems that most are coming out of florida, and going into the rest of the country.

FD

 

[in_cavediver]

Ummmmmm, NO! I am only addressing US-to US 6351 tank sales. 400 a year? try closer to 400 a month. It may even be more than that. It seems that most are coming out of florida, and going into the rest of the country.

FD

OK, we'll say 400 a month, that still works out to be 96 tanks/state divided up amoung the shops. For it to meet the econmic payback ($1200 invested, +$10 added per tank, 2 years), each shop would still need to see 2/3 of them, just to recoup the investment. As I said above, some shops serving larger area's can see a payback, and they have the machines. Smaller shops that don't have the volume, its just throwing money away on the machine. It will never see the payback.