Hard-
Surfacing,
Building
Fusion
Welding
Carbon
Welding
Non-Ferrous
Metals
Heating
& Heat
Treating
Braze
Welding
Welding
Cast Iron
Welding
Ferrous
Metals
Brazing
&
Soldering
Equipment
Set-Up
Operation
Equipment
For
OXY-Acet
Structure
of
Steel
Mechanical
Properties
of Metals
Oxygen
&
Acetylene
OXY-Acet
Flame
Physical
Properties
of Metals
How Steels
Are
Classified
Expansion
&
Contraction
Prep
For
Welding
OXY-Acet
Welding
& Cutting
Safety
Practices
Manual
Cutting
Oxygen
Cutting By
Machine
Appendices
Testing
&
Inspecting
2
Dr. Carl Von Linde of Germany built
his first plant for producing liquid air (to be used for refrigerating purposes)
in 1895, the same
year in which Le Chatelier discovered the remarkable properties of the oxy-acetylene
flame. In 1902,
Von Linde built a plant which not only liquefied air, but then fractionated it
to produce pure oxygen. With acetylene
already widely available, the basic resources needed for general exploitation
of the oxy-acetylene processes
were now available. In 1907, the first U.S. plant to use the Linde process was
started in Buffalo, N.Y. Although
several plants which made oxygen (and hydrogen) by electrolysis of water were
started up in the 1907- 1912
period, by 1914 the ”liquid air” process was recognized as
the way to produce high-purity oxygen, and it
remains so to this day.
Some Early Exploits
Although oxygen cutting was actually
demonstrated at the Seattle World’s Fair, shortly after the century opened,
commercially-useful torches were not
available for several years. In 1907, Eugene Bournonville, one of the
outstanding figures in the development
of the oxy-acetylene processes in the U.S., showed the U.S. Navy Yard in
Brooklyn that 14-inch portholes in
armor plate 2-3 in. thick could be cut in 12 minutes. Before that demonstration,
the portholes were being chipped out,
after huge kerosene torches had preheated the steel. It had taken two torch
operators and five chippers 10 days
to cut one porthole. Later that year, American-made cutting torches were used
on the demolition of the old Grand
Central Station in N.Y. City, at one-twentieth the cost that older methods would
have entailed. The next year, three
men with cutting torches cut out the four 70-ton structural steel shields which
had been used in construction of the
H & M railroad tunnels under the Hudson River, a job which would otherwise
have required 20 workmen.
Fig. 2-1. This sketch of an early oxy-acetylene
welding operation was printed
in a 1906 issue of the ACETYLENE JOURNAL.
