Attached is a picture (cwcyl) of the cylinder I received from Cyberweld. It has no DOT stamp or markings whatsoever. The test date is 2014/11 with no star, which according to the weld shop I went to means it expires in 5 years. I confirmed this by searching the net. The cylinder was shipped Jan 2020, so this cylinder was shipped from Cyberweld
already expired.
From
https://store.cyberweld.com/shielgascyl22.html :
"All cylinders are brand new 3AA2015 with ten year test." - Absolute lie. Cylinder does not have 3AA stamp and is dated 2014 with a 5 year test. They also repeatedly answer in the Q&A that the cylinders are DOT certified. Also a lie unless there is some way to DOT certify cylinders without them being DOT stamped.
The weld shop informed me that shady places will do this to sell welding kits with a cylinder to save a few bucks. They also said they will underfill the cylinders (mine came at 1900 PSI, underfilled) for safety reasons, whereas most places will 10% overfill (2200 PSI) which is perfectly safe on DOT tested cylinders.
Luckily they were nice and only charged me $35 for a retest even though they said they would probably have to toss the cylinder. You can see my new cylinder in setup2 and setup3 has a DOT-3AA mark on it which the CW cylinder should have had, and the date stamp is 12A15 (12/2015) with a + and a star after it. It was filled to 2150 PSI.
In the end, this probably doesn't matter unless you think you are going to need to swap/refill the cylinder at a local shop, but it is a very shady business practice all around and I seriously doubt CW would ship an expired cylinder to a business address who would catch this immediately, so I think they are taking advantage of residential shipments.
Anyways, in setup2, you can see all the fittings together. I
strongly recommend using 1/4" tubing over 3/8". I got 3/8" the first time and the tubing is still quite large and because they are coiled up on the shelf, it was dragging the bag strongly to one side trying to recoil itself during my test. The 1/4" is a lot thinner so it has less leverage, although I did stretch it out and put some heavy books on each end overnight to help get rid of the coil.
In setup3, I'm using a plastic bin you can find anywhere with some heavy tools in it to weigh the bin down and keep the cylinder in place. It isn't going anywhere.
I also recommend your standard everyday Reynolds Wrap large bags (19x23.5in). I had ordered something off of Amazon previously and they were made of a different plastic that was much noisier/crinklier/however you want to describe it. The Reynolds are made of a softer, nicer plastic and seem plenty big enough.
I have one more question for everyone - the recommended sitting up position has something to do with keeping the bag on your head right? I have really bad issues with my neck that make regular sitting like this difficult. So for my second and hopefully successful attempt I plan on lying flat on my bed. I tested it with the bag on and thrashed around and the bag seemed no worse for wear, but it wasn't filled with anything except ambient air. Please let me know if there is a serious problem with this strategy.
Thanks