Nice piece of salvage there Rob , I could here the bullfinch laughing along with the doves at the HHO , another notch in its handle , thanks for the comparison 😀👍
Hi Paul, it was interesting to see what it's limits are and I expected it to do better. But copper/brass are heat hogs, so I guess it's to be expected. It can easily cut through a steel can, but it can't melt a small amount of silver solder. Shows how heat loss is your enemy when brazing. BTHU are king. Cheers Rob
A good demonstration of the difference between temperature and heat. I'm sure the hydrogen torch flame is a higher temperature but just not enough heat. Rob convinced me to get a Bullfinch and I've never regretted it. They aren't cheap but they do the job.
Hi Peter, yes right on both counts. The heat also has to be concentrated to be usable. The Bullfinch does both. Still the cheapest option over all for general workshop/small mass work. Oxy/LPG offers more capability and is now much more affordable due to the availability of rent free bottles, but the running cost is 10 times that of straight LPG. You use 4 oxy with one LPG by weight. That running cost (mostly oxygen) soon adds up. The oxy/LPG kits are half the price of the Bullfinch, so the initial cost looks better. You also have to wear a number 5 eye filter/shade with oxy, when brazing. LPG requires no UV filter. Both are good options. It all depends on your requirements. Cheers Rob
Yes, same here. It has become affordable for home use now that you don't have to rent the bottles any more. It still works out at ten times more expensive for consumables compared to straight LPG in the Bullfinch torch, but it allows you to do greater mass jobs. The oxy/LPG kits are also half the price of the Bullfinch kit. Cheers Rob
Even as the rate of energy delivered is vitally important, this something to consider. Observing at 9:03 isn't the flame just too short and small. I am not sure that all of hydrogen is burning or if it is, that the heat is being delivered to the working piece. Maybe the metal is sucking away the heat too fast or blowing off the work piece and burning invisibly a distance away. Isn't there a hottest part of a flame and wouldn't it be further out?
I have one of these machines, it is massively hot, and high output where it blows my solder off my soldering pad like a leaf blower. I have to trap the solder to pick it up with my pick, and use lots of flux to it it to stick to the piece I am working on. Did you put potassium hydroxide in the water for the tank? If you didn't that is why you are not getting the output need for work like you were doing there. II can melt silver with my torch.
The only thing I'm wondering about those is if you put the HHO thruough the oxy valve on a little torch and propane thru the fuel valve wouuld it burn hotter. That flame sounds kinda hissy like theres some extra oxygen. and also love your shows good work!
Been a while, I used to keep and race homing pigeons...same basic noise! But, I'm wondering about the shop mascot, the Blue Tongue Skink, did it show this year? Cheers, Rich...Seattle.
Good vid, but as you found out they aren't great in anything other than a light goldsmithing setup .... I had one and other than being a bit of a curiosity I found myself soldering with a propane sievert or my old reliable torches .... i remember they were good for fine chain repair. Nothing you cant do with propane and a bit of skill :)
Good vid Rob , confirms my thoughts that this is more of a jewelry type tool. That said though, the temperature could be a little fierce for small jobs with silver and gold. Hard to know which way this one wants to go.
Hi Lee, I wouldn't know about that. I have seen some reviews and comments by jewelers who like this and similar units. The one thing I don't like about HHO is that it has an oxidizing flame, which is not great for brazing. Straight LPG/propane is very good in that regard and also incapable of melting ferrous metal. So it is a lot safer to use LPG than any oxy boosted torch, which could easily melt the job if you weren't careful Cheers Rob
The torch tip is far too small to handle something of that bulk. I have one of these myself I used primarily for gold, silver and platinum work with Jewelery. However, if you get a larger torch tip, you can actually solder up to a 10 mm copper pipe without any trouble. The torch tip you were using in the video is about half the size of the one you need. And it’s also about the maximum capacity this HHO generator can handle.
Hi Robert, the bubbler is using distilled water. So it should have minimal effect on the HHO. It's just not intended for this sized work, even though it is quite small. Plus copper/brass are heat hogs. The same torch will easily cut through a steel can because the heat transfer rate is so low. Cheers Rob
@@RobertSzasz Yeah, you would be amazed at how little sodium need be present to color a flame. Plasma balls inside a microwave contained in a glass jar get enough sodium from the glass walls to color it orange. Seen a yt video of this.
I suppose there's a reason they advertise these things as acrylic polishers. That being said I have seen some homemade ones work decently good as cutting torches, got to pump a lot of power into them for anything thick.
This is a tiny flame for that big mass of copper and brass, remember heat travels about 10 times faster in copper than in steel, this makes the heat go away from the joint VERY fast, it's like a massive heat sink. Wonder how it would behave using stainless steel where heat travels about half what it does in steel, the heat would stay more in the heated spot...
Hi Pierre, I can bronze braze steel with it up to 3mm as shown in an earlier video, but the heat loss/transfer from copper/brass is too high for that sized job. The video was a good demonstration of the difference between temperature and BTHU. It will easily cut through a steel tin can because of low heat transfer, but can't melt a small amount of silver solder due to inadequate BTHU. It was a bit unfair on the torch considering what it is designed for, but proved a point about the importance of the several issues when brazing. I put it up because I'm sure there are a lot of people out there wondering how well it compares. Cheers Rob
I'm thinking of electrifying the shed roof Peter. Not sure how well that would go down with the animal libbers though ;) He He nothings too good for those damn birds. Cheers Rob
I use thé water welder for jewelry for many years. I mixe alcool 75% and acetone 25% and 2 tea spoon borax for flux in one liter .With acetone the flame will be 3 times bigger . Try a bigger tip. Dont hold the part in vice, put it on a ceramic tile . I melt gold with my machine. But it will never béat acétylène for big work. The machine was made to produce a small very hot and clean flame. With borax there is no oxydation
Hi Guildo, thanks for the tips. I will give acetone a go as I have a litre or so of it. I was aware of the potential heat sink effect of the vice. Does the flux go in the bubbler ? Cheers Rob
xynudu you mix alcool acétone and borax and pour it in the fluxer ( the small chrome container) you will have a Green flame from the torche. The borax in the mix clean the metal and help thé solder to flow. Keep applaing the flux as usuel. Excuse my english i am French Canadian.
The Bullfinch 404 has (according to its datasheet) 4700 Watts thermal power, the H160 has 300 W electrical and at best (very optimistic) maybe 200 W thermal, probably even less. So by these numbers the Bullfinch is at least 23 times as powerful as the H160. You would need a HHO generator of almost 10 kW electrical to produce enough HHO for a 4.7 kW flame.
Probably around those figures. Both torches are od course built for entirely different purposes, but to get Bullfinch performance with (almost) free HHO would be very nice. Cheers Rob
Rob I also hate the doves remember them from 6 years old when the westerly winds and I was crook - hate the little buggers. Very interesting video by the way....
Hi Pat, I looked into oxygen concentrators, but they are quite expensive unless you can get one second hand cheaper. Oxy/propane or LPG has a lot going for it. You could easily rig one up. Cheers Rob
xynudu I wonder if you can just bleed the oxygen of an electrolytic machine (vent the hydrogen) then burn oxy propane flame? Which should have more calories/joules (Acetylene/Ethene being the ultimate in that regard)
Hi Rob,. started noticing lately that when I watch a video and give a thumbs up that it shows that it was touched and saves to liked videos but does not change the counter. It stays the same number and it use to always go to the next number. I watch all your videos and a few others and they! have all been doing that. Thought I should let you know Dale in Canada
Hi Dale, YT does some strange things now. Since their recent changes lots of stuff works poorly or not at all. Comments are delayed until they get to a certain number now. LOL. They can't leave it alone. Cheers Rob
Gentlemen, you say the answers already, low btu. You vice, the copper nut, the tube, they are all transferring heat away faster than you apply heat. You want to melt the silver solder you got to retain heat on that particular spot, or you had to overpower it, more heat than it transferring. It is like using a 15watt solding iron to solder a one inch pipe. These HHO are only good for small joints, such as jewellery where the materials on both side are thin and the heat sink effect is less than the heat you apply. Or you had to wait until more HHO come out from the generator, it is just yellow flame, not blue flame, very likely not enough reaction inside the chamber.
Hi rob Great videos But I must say that small torch, the flame is yellow that's to cool, the flame needs to be blue Like the Bulfinch torch I have watched you use that small torch before and thought the same thing Yellow flame not enough heat,as I'm sure you already know Eddie Harper UK
Hi Eddie, yes, I took a viewers advice and swapped out the water in the bubbler for alcohol and acetone. Made a a big difference, but while better, it still lacks the BTHU's required for that sized brazing job. The rod doesn't flow very well. The unit is still handy though for certain jobs like unlocking/heating up Loctited bolts in situ and soldering. The small flame has it's uses for sure. Cheers Rob
UPDATE: I've since managed to increase the heat output and flame length/colour by using an alcohol and acetone mix in the bubbler as suggested by an ex-jeweler in the comments. It has made a significant difference, but the BTHU output is still too low for satisfactorily silver soldering a join of the mass show (even when insulated on a brick). It will melt the silver solder, but it flows poorly. Cheers Rob
Hi Stephen, I will see what I can do. I need to play around with it a bit more first to see how it performs. I also have another mod in mind. Cheers Rob
@@Xynudu You sure about that, Rob? 15A x 220V is closer to 3Kw, no? Or is the 15A on stepped down voltage? Have to say, that's a pretty disappointing performance, though.
Yes, I did. Good point Roy. There's no way it is pulling 15 amps off the mains. It would trip the breaker. Hmmmm. It will be hugely stepped down voltage. I think the anode/cathode use 12 volts DC, so work on that. Cheers Rob
Horses for courses…maybe if you’d kept the pipe in the vice instead of the brass fitting, it would have eventually melted the joint. All the heat should have been concentrated on the fitting which was acting like a heat sink. Maybe now you’ve had more practice, an updated review would be useful…
Yes Harry, this was a bit unfair on it, but I'm sure a lot of people were wondering just how effective that very high temperature flame (easily cuts through a steel tin can) really is in a high heat loss situation. Cheers Rob
