Helium Shortage?

[flozki]

if you use air. make sure you use absoulte dry air....
and with helium better heat transmission

the most helium we always used when someone forgot to close the bottle...
so make a solenoid in between. and connect it to the cutter down signal...then your bottle will last way longer

[jjgolden]

Here's an article which describes the state of Helium availability in the US right now. Our local store "Airgas" stopped selling it here in Ventura Ca. also.


http://www.gasworld.com/world-exclusive-helium-shortage-20/5727.article

[audadvnc]

Interesting. I can recall several years ago questioning the wisdom of the US gov't when it was dumping all its strategic helium reserves and flooding the market, debasing its price. Looks like the chickens are coming home to roost.

[mossboss]

Well the plans to make blimps went out the window so did the storage of Helium I suppose There are other military applications which most likely went past they use by date so here we are a shortage
Cheers

[Greg Reierson]

Scientists Speak Out Against Helium In Balloons

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09/23/0518247/scientists-speak-out-against-wasting-helium-in-balloons?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

[Serif]

Quatar II refinery comes online next May, but another article says that without the Government Storage of Helium which is byproduced from treatment of natural gas and its upgrading, enough Earth-born He will be lost to outer space that usable supplies will run out by 2015. Until aliens bring some from the beyond... Second most abundant element in the Universe is harder to hold onto than "nailing smoke to a tree." Maybe we should all switch back to Westrex cutterheads... (/;


- Hairy Bottlefountain

[opcode66]

The world is going to run out of helium by 2015.
FALSE

The U.S. government’s strategic stockpile will be largely sold off by 2015. The world still has tremendous unexploited helium reserves.

[djlithium]

HAve you guys considered implementing liquid cooling solutions popularized in gaming PC rigs?

[opcode66]

A 74 drive package for a neumann lathe is 350 Watts per channel. That's a maximum of 700 watts running through the cutterhead. Not something i would feel comfortable running fluid lines through. Nothing is perfect. If a seal started leaking it could cause corrosion/rusting. At worst you could cause a short and blow your cutterhead. That is a very expensive fix for Neumann heads (6K and 3 to 6 months downtime).

I've considered this in the past. Seriously, compesed air would work if you could remove the moisture.