Part 1 Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting History up to 1918

Gas welding using oxygen and hydrogen dates back to the 1850s but the flame is virtually useless for welding steel. Gas welding had to await the discovery of the oxy-acetylene flame and a way to make acetylene at reasonable cost. Edmund Davy a famous British chemist is considered the first man to make acetylene. In 1836 attempting to make potassium he produced a black compound (potassium carbide) which reacted with water to produce a gas which burned with great brilliancy. He thought it would make an excellent illuminating gas but could not be made at moderate cost.Calcium carbide was not made and identified until 1862, again the process did not offer economic possibilities. Calcium carbide was undoubtedly accidentally produced in electric furnace operations before 1892, not until that year was it produced and identified both in France and the U.S. The experimenters were trying to make something else, only the Americans realised the potential commercial value. Major J.Turner Morehead and Thomas L.Wilson using an electric furnace were attempting to make calcium from quicklime and coal tar. The product of their electric furnace run was a dark crystalline mass which reacted violently with water. They had found a way to make acetylene economically and were not slow to recognise the value of their discovery. Because they sent a sample to Lord Kelvin in England together with details of the method by 1895 calcium carbide plants were operating in both England and France, as well as in the U.S. Plants in Norway and Switzerland followed close behind.All the acetylene made from calcium carbide during the first few years was used for lighting, house lamps, miner’s lamps and car lamps. In 1895, however, a French chemist, Henry Le Chatelier announced to the world that combustion of equal quantities of acetylene and oxygen produced a flame far hotter (3300 degrees C) than any gas flame previously known. He pointed out that the flame did not oxidise the metals which it melted. Experimenters went to work to find a way of controlling the flame for welding purposes. Credit for producing the first torch is generally given to Edmond Fouche, of France, who had already discovered a safe way to compress acetylene into cylinders. In 1903, Fouche sent one of his first torches to the U.S., where it was used with success that same year. The process of making acetylene from calcium carbide is still used to make most of our acetylene today.Dr.Carl Von Linde of Germany built his first plant for producing liquid air in 1895. In 1902 he built a plant which liquefied air and then fractionated it to produce pure oxygen. With acetylene already widely available the basic resources for the 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. Several plants which made oxygen by electrolysis were started up in the 1907-1912 period but by 1914 the ‘liquid air’ process was recognised as the way to produce high-purity oxygen. High purity is particularly necessary for cutting operations.Oxygen cutting was demonstrated at the Seattle World’s Fair, shortly after the century opened, but 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 armour plate 2-3 inches thick could be cut in 12 minutes. Previously it had taken two kerosene torch operators and five chippers 10 days to cut one porthole. Later in 1907 American-made cutting torches were used in the demolition of the old Grand Central Station in New York at one twentieth of the cost that older methods would have entailed. The next year three men with cutting torches cut out four 70 ton structural steel shields which had been used in the construction of railway tunnels under the Hudson River a job which would otherwise have required 20 workmen.In 1910 a 9000 ft pipeline built to bring water down to hydroelectric generators from a natural reservoir in Colorado, began to leak so badly, only months after entering service that a repair was essential. The pipe diameter was about 4 feet, with walls more than an inch thick at the lower end, where the internal pressure was 825 psi. Butt joints had been held together by riveted steel straps both inside and outside. A half-million dollar investment was in jeopardy. Welders repaired 200 joints successfully, using acetylene generated on the spot from 18 tons of calcium carbide and fed to torches through lines as long as 500 feet. Oxygen was produced from 23 tons of potassium perchlorate in two stationary plants and then compressed into cylinders.During the years 1912-1917 the oxy-acetylene processes really came into their own. Five manufacturers were using cutting and welding in the building of all-steel railway cars, and railway shops were using cutting and welding for manufacturing and repair purposes. Oxygen and acetylene plants by the score were in operation. The rapid expansion in steel output required during World War I would never have been achieved if the oxygen cutting torch had not made possible the cutting up of thousands of tons of scrap steel.Long before the first basic oxygen steel converter went into service steel mills consumed thousands of tons of oxygen removing surface defects from blooms, billets and slabs prior to rolling the steel to final plate or sheet form. These processes can be traced back to early use of oxy-acetylene cutting torches which were slightly modified so that they could groove steel rather than cut it.