Our Sites

Technology Spotlight: Clearing out the blowback slag

A new tool makes it easier to clean out a cutting tip, extending its life and cutting down on lost production time

Figure 1. By hitting the striking surface of the piston, the fabricator provides the force that sends water in the stainless steel tool through the orifices of the cutting tip, which is encased between upper and lower components that are threaded together. As the water is forced through the orifices, the blowback slag is discharged and settles at the bottom of the lower member.

Van Steel has spent the last 40 years involved in welding-related construction projects all over the world, the most recent being on the east coast of Africa. He has seen every sort of heavy-duty fabricating operation, and at each stop he has noticed the same thing—a huge collection of spent cutting tips that were deemed unusable because of excessive blowback slag. We’re talking 55-gallon drums filled with these damaged consumables at places such as shipyards and industrial construction sites.

He’s also seen remote operations, such as on oil rigs and at pipeline construction sites, where work ground to a halt because an oxyfuel cutting tip was rendered useless from excessive blowback slag and a replacement tip wasn’t readily available. Crew and equipment had to sit and wait for the new tips to arrive, which typically took several hours in the best of circumstances.

Such circumstances led him to spend the last couple of years developing a tool to remove blowback slag from many popular one-piece oxyfuel and plasma cutting tips.

“It can clean tips on the spot and extend the life of cutting tips up to 70 percent,” Steel said. “It’s a way to address those hidden costs that rob a company’s profit.”

How It Works

The slagRebel tool consists of three primary components: a piston with a striking surface, a lower member, and an upper member. The stainless steel tool is made by an ISO 9001-certified machine shop in San Antonio, Texas.

To clean out a cutting tip with excessive blowback slag with the tool, a fabricator:

  1. Places the lower member of the slagRebel into a vise. (Steel said the use of a vise makes the most sense as it keeps the entire assembly stable during the cleaning process and prevents potential injuries related to someone missing the piston and hitting a finger.)
  2. Inserts the cutting tip into the insert and into the lower member.
  3. Threads the upper member snugly onto the lower member, thus encasing the cutting tip.
  4. Fills the tube on the upper member with potable water.
  5. Inserts the piston into the upper member’s tube.
  6. Strikes the piston once or twice with a hammer to drive water through the cutting tip orifices to remove blowback slag (see Figure 1). (If the work is being done in a combustible area, the fabricator should use a dead blow hammer to avoid sparking.) Water and air escapes through a weep hole in the lower member.
  7. Takes out the piston, removes the upper member, pull out the tip, and discards the slag.
  8. Uses fresh water to remove any debris from the tool.

Some people have questioned the use of water, but Steel said that it is much better than the alternatives.

“If I use regular hydraulic oil, the residual oil in the tip and oxygen combination during torch use is a combustible mix,” he said. “On the other hand, I just use water, and I can create enough force with it to blow the slag back out of the orifices in the direction it came from.

“Also, the water is clean,” Steel added. “It’s readily available, and it does the job.”

Fabricators that actually have spent time trying to clean these cutting tips were reliant on drills about the size of a jewelry drill. Steel said that these devices presented two problems:

  1. If a fabricator doesn’t hit the center of the cutting tip orifice with the right-sized drill bit, he risks changing the orifice into an oblong or oval shape, which in turn affects the ability to generate a neutral cutting flame.
  2. A fabricator typically holds the cutting tip in one hand and uses the drill in the other hand. When the drill bits snap, they can easily penetrate a glove and potentially injure the fabricator who is cleaning the cutting tip.

Steel said his tool is unlike anything else that has been offered to battle blowback slag. One patent involved the use of a swivel blade that scraped out orifices, and another one, which was somewhat similar to his in design, called for the use of a black powder cartridge to create an explosion, where the resulting pressure was used to clean out the cutting tips. He said that his tool is safe, simple to understand, and easy to use.

Figure 2. The stainless steel slagRebel tool is small enough to fit in a toolbox or in a worker’s pocket.

“It’s human nature not to like change, but torch users will quickly recognize the benefits [of using this tool],” he said. “Accepting the consequences of slag blowback in terms of lost production and tip replacement costs is what has happened over the years, and it’s counter-productive.

“They’ll know better when I can get the word out to the rest of the world,” Steel added.

He has introduced the 6.75-in. tool (see Figure 2) to pipeliners in Oklahoma and pipefitters in Texas, and they have been very receptive to the product, even recommending the tool to peers working for nearby contractors and manufacturing companies. The slagRebel website currently has products for many cutting tips used on popular oxyfuel and plasma cutting torches, and inserts can be milled for other torch tips if the fabricator can provide the maker and the model or part number of the consumable used on the torch.

“It’s a quick turnaround on the investment,” Steel said. “If a guy uses the tool 15 to 20 times, he has recaptured the cost of it.”

slagRebel, www.slagrebel.com

About the Author
The Fabricator

Dan Davis

Editor-in-Chief

2135 Point Blvd.

Elgin, IL 60123

815-227-8281

Dan Davis is editor-in-chief of The Fabricator, the industry's most widely circulated metal fabricating magazine, and its sister publications, The Tube & Pipe Journal and The Welder. He has been with the publications since April 2002.