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That Tuesday I forgot my respirator cartridge was expired
Spent the whole morning welding in a tight tank with a bad cartridge and ended up with a headache so bad I could barely drive home. Anyone else keep a log of when they swap out their cartridges, or just go by smell?
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piperr5821d ago
Write the date on the cartridge with a sharpie the second you crack it open. That's the bare minimum I do after I ended up sick like you did. @janab82 brought up a good point about different metals too, and she's right. I started keeping a little log in my phone notes, just the date and what I was welding that day. For galvanized stuff I swap out way sooner than forty hours, maybe every twenty five or thirty hours of actual torch time. That headache is your body telling you the filter isn't catching everything anymore, so don't wait until you can taste or smell it.
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Vera mentioned a notebook system, and I'm curious how detailed that gets. Like, does your friend write down the specific fumes he's dealing with that day, or just the hours? Because welding galvanized steel vs stainless puts off way different stuff, and I'd think the cartridge wears down faster with some jobs. My old foreman swore by swapping every 40 hours of actual use, but he never accounted for what kind of welding we were doing.
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Idk my friend keeps it pretty simple, just writes what he's welding and the date he started using the cartridge. He said after a while he could see a pattern with galvanized stuff needing a swap way sooner than the 40 hour rule. It's a little extra work but beats guessing when your filter's shot.
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vera_lewis21d ago
Oh honey, I feel for you. That headache sounds awful and honestly a little scary. I used to just go by smell too, thinking I could tell when the cartridge was done. But after a close call where I got dizzy and sick from fumes I couldn't even smell, I started marking the date on the cartridge with a permanent marker the day I open it. It's not a perfect system, but at least I know roughly how long it's been. A friend of mine keeps a little notebook in his toolbox and writes the date and how many hours he used it each day. I know that sounds like a lot of extra work, but that headache you had is a pretty clear sign it matters.
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