Hi there,

I am slowly working on getting torches setup in my garage so I can practice bending. I bought a set of used equipment from a long time bender in Montana and I'm not exactly sure on the final pieces of equipment I need to connect my air and gass manifold to my torches. I took some photos of where I'm at and what equipment I do have.

What type of nipple do I need from my PVC to my air hose? For the ribbon burner it seems like the nipple from the gas manifold is too small to match up with the inflow on the economizer. Should the gas and air lines go directly to the inflows on the crossfire or do I need some sort of mixer there first?

Thanks in advance!

I know it's been mentioned in the members meeting and maybe on the forums, but I would love to be connected to a mentor that could help walk me through getting started bending so I have a good foundation while I being to practice.

You'll need to run your air and gas into a pipework manifold (keep this as short and as large a diameter as practical for your installation. Then using T's and other pipe fittings, provide taps from there to hose barbs to then run hoses to each burner. Each burner then needs an adjustable air and gas valve to tune the mixture. Ideally, these need to be located at the burner and not way back on the table. (Both for performance and safety reasons.) from these valves, the fuel and air goes into the economizer/mixing chamber of the ribbon or through the mixer of the crossfire (after which it is split to each head).  Additionally, you will save yourself a lot of hassle and just have an all around nicer setup if you also fit a single on/off gas valve at each output from the gas manifold before the hose runs--this lets you shutdown an individual burner independently of the others and does so without any change to your mixture adjustments. Then when you want, simply open that valve and relight the burner. Keep in mind that your fine adjustment valves should not be cranked down tight if closing because it will damage the seats and cause them to leak. ( a separate shutoff avoids anyone doing that.)

Additionally, I recommend two books:  "Neon Techniques & Handlng" by Samuel C Miller (or any of the older books he wrote, going back to 1935) and "The Neon Engineers Notebook" by Morgan Crook and Jacob Fishman.  I have also put together a document regarding building a portable system-- it has some photos, and descriptions as well and while written for the portable use, the design principles are applicable to a fixed installation as well.  You can find it at: https://www.novioljourneys.com/?p=1246

I realize I have only touched on part of this, and there is a lot to unpack here. Feel free to call me directly to discuss any aspect of it in more detail.