I am using a Nortel Redmax burner in my laboratory to burn stuff, but wanted to connect the burner to our tube system in order to control the gas flow with our flowmeters. What I need are swagelok fittings.
By default, the Redmax burner comes either with hose barb fittings or standard “B” hose fittings.
Haven’t heard before of standard B hose fittings, but thanksfully the well-explained blog entry from Mike Aurelius shed some light.
So far so good, a needed a cheap, self-made, easy to get solution. I also had recently stumbled upon a discussion on cheaper Swagelok-alternatives (on reddit) and so I decided to give the yor-lok fittings from McMaster a try:
Part list:
- 2x [3/8″ TubeOD x 1/4 NPT Male ], Part# 5272K194
- 1 x Nut for Welding Hose Fitting, Oxygen, Part# 7919A3 (right-hand thread)
- 1 x Nut for Welding Hose Fitting,Fuel, Part# 7919A4 (left-hand thread, notched)
I had the fitting on the side of the NPT thread (which I did not need) turned, so that the nut would rest on this shoulder.
I removed only that much material, such that it would still require some gentle force to slide the nut on the fitting. I confess, I could have been more picky and actually removed all of the NPT thread, but I was focusing on minimizing the effort here.
After that, the pieces were brazed together. Extra points to everyone for using a silver solder here.
Et voilà, the self-made adapter allows now for connecting a flexible hose with a Swagelok fitting to the Redmax Burner. Overall a cheap and fast solution (omitting the delivery time).
As of now, the Yor-lok fitting works just as good as the Swagelok ones.
