price of shielding gas?

Date 06-26-2008 17:36

I developed that welding cost estimator, but ironically so I was never able to find accurate costs of shielding gas the accountant who has the numbers is on vacation, so I just took a guess.
I'm curious does anyone know the going rate for CO2, argon, tri-mix etc? all the gas distributors will only price that stuff if you call. I'm wondering what people are actually paying per cylinder (and the size of the cylinder).

of course this will vary from region to region and if you rent or own the cylinders etc, but it would be nice to have some numbers to average up

By Kix

Date 06-26-2008 17:48

What trimix are you wanting to know about?

By OBEWAN

Date 06-26-2008 18:17

I used to work for Linde industrial gas, and the numbers are all over the map depending on volume of business. I mean, US steel bought about $20 million a year, so their price was extremely different from the small fabricator. Because of securities and exchange laws, we were forbidden to discuss price with anyone execept the customer the contract was being written for. In other words, secret deals were made. We could not tell customer B what customer A paid, or discuss pricing with a competitor. You might get some info though about what the simple customer pays the LWS.

By Metarinka (****)

Date 06-26-2008 19:41

I realized that to an extent I was just curious as to approximate going rate for retail or single cylinder purchases.

By DaveBoyer (*****)

Date 06-27-2008 03:33

I will find out tomorow what I have to pay, I am a really small time, essentally hobby welder. In the past I paid about $32 to refill a little 40 CuFt argon cylinder and about $38 to refill a 120 CuFt cylinder, so the majority of the cost is just them handling the cylinder, not the actual contents.That was with AirGas, customer owned cylinders, and a year or more ago. You definatly pay through the nose with the small cylinders.

By rlitman (***)

Date 06-27-2008 20:40

As a hobbyist myself as well, I'm paying about $35 for 60CuFt refills, on customer owned cylinders. Same price, for a refill, or exchange.
A friend of mine with 80CuFt tanks, only pays a buck or two more.

Pricing in my scale is definitely based mostly on cylinder handling. The most extreme example of this, is between an MC, and B acetylene exchange, where the B is four times the size, but only about 10% more to have filled.
Helium, now that's a different story. Every time I get a refill these past few years, I was either told that I was lucky, and that a price increase would be happening in the next few days, or that I just missed out on the lower price by a few days. Yes, large volumes are better deals, but helium is just getting ridiculous.

By DaveBoyer (*****)

Date 06-28-2008 04:36

Today I exchanged a bunch of customer owned cylinders. Argon 333 CuFt $49.00 * Acetylene 140 CuFt $52.00 * Acetylene "B" 40 CuFt $19.80 * Acetylene "MC" 10 CuFt $8.00 * Oxygen 61 CuFt $9.40 The prices were a little better than I would have gotten otherwise because I used a friend's account.

By ericpratt (*)

Date 06-26-2008 18:58

i just paid $21.00 for a regular size cylinder of argon.

By TRC

Date 06-27-2008 20:08

I just priced a large He. $100 from AirGas and $150 from a smaller supplier.

By ZCat

Date 06-27-2008 22:07

I'm curious how much one of the big liquid argon tanks goes for.