Building a welding glove box

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Anyone built a glove box? Was thinking about getting a cheap harbor freight sandblasting cabinet sealing it up and putting good gloves in it, but upon looking at them I decided not to due to the bad quality better to start from scratch. I’m planning to build one was hoping for some input? I’d love to put an airlock on it so if I need to add or remove something I don’t waste all the argon and have to wait 10 min to purge it. If anyone has one they like let me know.
Reply:

Originally Posted by 426hemi

Anyone built a glove box? Was thinking about getting a cheap harbor freight sandblasting cabinet sealing it up and putting good gloves in it, but upon looking at them I decided not to due to the bad quality better to start from scratch. I’m planning to build one was hoping for some input? I’d love to put an airlock on it so if I need to add or remove something I don’t waste all the argon and have to wait 10 min to purge it. If anyone has one they like let me know.
Reply:Interesting! I wasn’t planning to vacuum the glove box, but rather purge the box with argon and vent the opposite top corner. Vacuuming the box down is a great idea should save a lot of gas! My question is what kind of gloves can withstand 15 psi yet have enough dexterity to allow one to weld? Please excuse my ignorance I’ve never welded in a glovebox before I normally backpurge and run a trailing cup when welding reactive metals. Working on a personal project the due to its shape and tight clearances will not allow this.
Reply:

Originally Posted by 426hemi

Interesting! I wasn’t planning to vacuum the glove box, but rather purge the box with argon and vent the opposite top corner. Vacuuming the box down is a great idea should save a lot of gas! My question is what kind of gloves can withstand 15 psi yet have enough dexterity to allow one to weld? Please excuse my ignorance I’ve never welded in a glovebox before I normally backpurge and run a trailing cup when welding reactive metals. Working on a personal project the due to its shape and tight clearances will not allow this.
Reply:

Originally Posted by Oldiron2

If you could evacuate the box to 10% of ambient pressure and refill with argon, after two evacuations you'd have 1% air left [ 0.1 x 0.1 = 0.01 =1%] and would have used 2 x 0.9 = 1.8 volumes of argon. If just running argon in on one side, all at ambient pressure, so it mixes with the air already there while a similar amount gets expelled from the other side, the rate the Ar/air ratio would decrease wrt argon admitted would depend on rate of ingress, the shape of the box, the size and shape of parts in the box, and probably a few other variables, so is likely impossible to predict but surely would require a whole lot more argon than two volumes to get near the 1% level.Would you only be welding steel stainless in it? If parts were of copper, using nitrogen would probably work as well.
Reply:

Originally Posted by 426hemi

Interesting! I wasn’t planning to vacuum the glove box, but rather purge the box with argon and vent the opposite top corner. Vacuuming the box down is a great idea should save a lot of gas! My question is what kind of gloves can withstand 15 psi yet have enough dexterity to allow one to weld? Please excuse my ignorance I’ve never welded in a glovebox before I normally backpurge and run a trailing cup when welding reactive metals. Working on a personal project the due to its shape and tight clearances will not allow this.
Reply:

Originally Posted by Denis G

The gloves on the gloveboxes I've used had locking plates to close off the outside part of the gloves.  There's piping and valves to allow both the inside and the outside of the glove to be evacuated so there is no pressure differential on the rubber gloves.  When the box is pumped down and backfilled, the valve that goes between the outside glove locking plates and the glovebox chamber is closed off.  Then you remove the plates to have access to the gloves.  The argon pressure is set only at a 2 or 3 psig.  The gloves don't want more pressure than that. The box I used had a deadweight pressure regulator.  It was just a flat weight resting on the gasketed flange of a welded elbow.  The weight kept the argon in the box at a slight positive pressure and would vent any increase in pressure from things heating in the glovebox or increases in pressure from sticking your hands in the gloves.