My friend asked to borrow my plasma cutter to make some fire barrels. These were 55gallon drums. His cousin and i asked if he knew what was in them which he said most of them are non flammable few had disiel in them…we said WHAT!? We told him how dangerous it would be to cut on a barrel with fumes in it but he was convinced it was not going to be an issue.
He could not have been more wrong!
As soon as he hit the torch to the barrel it violently exploded shearing the lid. Which hit my friends elbow. He was throw about 4 feet back. He suffered 8 stiches in his elbow and a fractured wrist and only minor flash burns. The explosion was so loud his neighbors down the road heard it,and my ears rang for several hours!
As horrific as this sounds i consider my friend to be super lucky as it could have been so much worse.
He was very very lucky. A former coworker did the same thing with an oil barrel that was cleaned out with America’s Universal Solvent and proceeded to do the same thing with the same results, but he lost a hand and hearing in his right ear. Sometimes F#@& around and find out isn’t worth the finding out.
Plasma cutters are more dangerous with combustible enclosed vessels as they add the air for combustion. I am not sure you could keep the suffocation blanket from exhaust intact with a plasma cutter. Better to use a cut off wheel to open the vessel before using a plasma…
ANYtime we are welding a closed vessel that might, JUST MIGHT, of had a combustible thing in it we suffocate it with a blanket of noncombustible gas. Usually we just put exhaust from a fuel injected engine, carburated engines are more likely to be fuel/oxygen rich than injected and a touch safer. EVERY life is worth the time to be careful. In 1992, while me and my brother were in the burn unit at Wesley Med, some of our neighbors in the hospital unit were in there from welding accidents like this. I remember Mr Farmer who had burns over 70% of his body from welding on a fuel tanker, he just barely survived. Another guy lost all his fingers and toes from a high voltage accident, they were blown off by the electricity (not welding)…
Better to be slow and use caution than your family members planning your funeral…