Tales from the Trenches, stories forged in the fires of experience.
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Alright, hello everyone.
Thank you for joining us on Tales from the Trenches.
We're hanging out with Don Gillis.
Hello Don.
Hi Clef, how are you today?
I'm doing good.
Let's spend a little bit of time talking about brazing and ways to protect things around
us and some of the experiences that we've had out in the field.
There are a lot of things that we can teach on brazing and burning in particular.
And like I always mention, I probably should have named this show Do As I Say, Not As I
Did.
Amen.
So let's share some stories from the world of Don Gillis out in the field.
Yeah, here we go.
I'm going to tell you all the little dirty secrets now, the skeletons.
So talking about brazing, I have a great story for you.
So we all make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes we make or sometimes the things that
we learn are mistakes we made in the field.
Those are probably the most things that stick with us the longest.
So let me tell you about what I learned when compressors, the Rolls in particular, started
coming out with copper clad steel material on the compressors.
When you were placing compressors, and you probably know where I'm headed with this.
So the reason they did that is to make it more rigid, if you will.
And if it tipped over your truck or got hit, when they were pure copper, they were easier
to bend that copper and get egg shaped and what have you.
So they brought the copper clad steel in.
So when I learned how to braze, it was always, and maybe I was wrong, taught wrong is to
heat that up on the female side and draw that braze in, you know, around and warm it up
first.
Well, when I started seeing this copper cut steel, first of all, I didn't know what they
were because it didn't really jump out at me.
It wasn't that big of a difference in color.
So I'm brazing these compressor in one day.
By the way, this happened to me twice.
I fell victim to it twice.
I'm brazing on the female side of the, and I got my rag there protecting up against the
compressor and I'm brazing on the female side and I'm brazing, brazing my brazing rod isn't
taking.
And next thing I know, the film on the female fitting started to kind of bubble up.
It ate it away.
Right.
Okay.
So you know where I'm headed with this.
So it's kind of like water in the pipes when you're plumbing, if you've ever done plumbing
before, it's not a good day.
So it got it burnt just enough that coating off.
And once you get down to that actual steel like that, it's then a real, real bear to
try to braze.
It took me a long time to get the flux rod out.
Probably exactly.
Exactly.
Get the flux rod out and get it.
So, and then it started to happen to me on a second time.
So here's what I learned along the way.
You know, fast forward is in actuality, there's actually an AE Bulletin with Copeland that
states this and I don't know it off the top of my head, but you can, if you just put the
search words in right, you'll find it, it'll pop right up.
But you actually, we have three different types of heat.
We have convection, we have radiant and we have conductive.
Right.
So they want you to use a one, two, three method.
And the method is this, you're at the female side of the compressor, that female fitting,
you know, on the compressor.
Yeah.
That's number three.
Number two is just entering that female fitting, the pipe itself.
And one's the back a little further.
So you start eating the pipe up with one about two inches out.
That pipe is then conducted, right?
Starts to heat up in the female fitting.
You step one step closer.
Steps two, you're still not on that compressor fitting to get a little bit warmer.
And the idea of it is when you get on top of that, the actual stub on the compressor,
that'll suck in real well.
And I have found that to be a blessing.
So if you're ever in that situation, but I want to share that with them because I've
told people that story before and it's, you know, going back to it's funny how we're all
human and we all make the same mistakes, you know?
And before smartphones, we made a lot more mistakes.
And you know, but you get those smiles in the classroom, like, you know, anybody felt
victim to that?
And the honest ones will raise their hand and go start smiling, nodding their head because
they have, you know, there's no instructional thing on that or there never was when it first
came out or whatever.
So that's one thing I wanted to share of disasters in my career that I have found along the way,
a learning experience.
It's a learning curve.
The other thing is, is protecting TXVs.
You know, there are so many TXVs were damaged early in my career, not just by me or not
by me, but as a service manager, I saw a lot of TXVs coming back for a lot of reasons,
you know, not using nitrogen, you know, when you're brazing, that's a big one.
I know we hear that all the time, but it's huge, huge, huge.
And with POE oil, it became even more impactful.
But protecting those TXVs and, you know, even, even, even liquid line filter dryers and those
kinds of things, wrapping that stuff, cooling it.
They've got a lot of good products out there, gel and what have you back in the olden days,
because now that's where I'm at in life.
It was very common.
We opened up the back of the door of a van.
You may or may not remember this, Cliff, you probably do, but everyone, everyone I knew
anyways had a little steel back when they made steel cans, like a Folger can, a Folger's
coffee can with a red rag in it.
Little red rag bucket.
You put your little water in there and you took that rag and that was your protection.
That's what you did.
Yeah.
So, so, but protecting everything like that is, and especially if you use, I know Turbo
Torches is a name brand, but the acetylene torches by themselves, they're great to carry
up 40 foot ladders.
I love mine.
I always did.
But I tell you, when you use settling oxygen, it is so much better in my opinion.
When settling came out, no, no knock on it for those of the user, use just settling,
please no hate mail.
But what I noticed when we went into the era of just the settling and those became more
popular is you saw a lot more damaged TXVs.
You saw service ports.
The nuts were actually swelling inside there.
And the next thing out of someone's mouth is all their junk, their junk, their junk.
But they didn't realize the longer they were staying on that, they were damaging things.
You know what I mean?
Absolutely.
I could always tell in the grocery market installations who was using straight acetylene
and who was using oxygen acetylene.
So all you'd have to do is open up the pans for the evaporators and wherever the TXV was,
if everything around it was scorched, you knew what they were using.
So the amount of heat that is radiated off from is pretty intense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I have both and I've used both, but I really like myself.
I was a, I don't know if I've even ever shared this with you, but I reinvented myself at
almost age 30.
I've been doing this just at 31 years now, but I was a laid off union welder.
And I worked in a factory and making farm equipment and we laid some pretty good sized
beads down.
So I already had a good grasp of how to braze and how to weld and those kinds of things
when I got into the field.
In fact, that was one of the things that the owners took notice to me right away that I
could braze pretty well, you know, but you know, so anyways, but yeah, that's a big one
there.
The compressor is a big one there on the heat also.
And then just, you know, just getting that pipe warm enough to put that braze down and
just anything like that.
Please remember to, you know, one of the things I like to share in the classroom is this is,
you know, we've all done it.
We've all been bent over a, you know, condenser of some sort hanging on and trying to braze
in a compressor.
Don't braze, don't un-braze them out of the condenser though.
Please please please cut them out.
Don't braze them out.
You need to have a little stub on there anyways if you're going to send it back to crimp.
So don't do that.
It's not worth it.
I've not been around anyone that's got seriously injured, but I've seen and heard a lot of
horror stories.
It's a, in fact, it became so common on one compressor that I know of that different manufacturers
actually moved where their suction line was on the compressor simply for that reason,
because the thought was if they lowered that suction coming in, that it would, it would
be lower and cool the motor down better the lower it was.
It would get, but actually it was, it did not change anything and people were getting
hurt because they were closer to that oil on the bottom of the compressor trying to
un-braze it out.
So be very, very careful with that.
I remember early on in my career, I was a very young guy in the field and we were, we
were changing a compressor on a residential AC and you know, it used to be a common practice
to braze out the compressor that, you know, that has since changed because we have changed
the way that we design the fittings and we do a lot more copper clad fittings now versus
solid copper that are attached to the compressor.
And I remember it was a scroll compressor.
This was early on, this was early 2000s and I was watching my mentor braze out this compressor
and there was obviously still some refrigerant in the oil and he had to get it so hot and
I imagine it was because of a copper clad fitting, he had to get it so hot that by time
it actually came off, there was phaging gas in the compressor.
And when it came out of the compressor, you know, it was just enough vapor form.
He was already bent over.
So he was already leaning down.
So his lungs were already compressed.
And when that phaging gas hit and he tried to back away from the compressor, when he
inhaled, of course with your lungs compressed, you stand up, your lungs are going to feel
and all he was feeling was phaging gas and went straight up and went straight back and
flat on his back on the ground and was passed out for about three minutes.
It's so funny you brought that up.
I occasionally when I can remember to, you know, if we get on that topic in the classroom,
I often ask if anybody, you know, has ever smelled that and you get people chuckling
and laughing and cause we've all done it before.
And I jokingly would say, and I really mean this though, when I would smell that sometimes
in my younger years and it hit me, it was so bad that I knew I probably just took some
amount of my life off years off my life, but I wasn't sure how much, you know what I mean?
That's how nasty it was.
You knew that can't be good.
That can't be good for you.
So yeah.
The other thing I wanted to talk about, you struck up about, you know, the brazing thing
too.
We talked a little bit about the, you know, the compressors, cutting them out, brazing
them out.
Another fun fact, if you will, is the liquid line filter dryers.
I think most people know that, but the objective of that, you know, the primary reason is to
remove moisture, right?
So don't embrace those, cut them out.
When you un-braze them, you're chasing that moisture back into the system only to be caught
again by the new liquid line filter dryer.
And you know, as common as you and I know that to be, you'd be surprised how many people
do not know that, you know what I mean?
Because it's easier to sweat them out and that's the way we were kind of taught, you
know what I mean?
I mean, that's the way it is.
So yeah, all good stuff.
So a lot of good lessons to learn about brazing and understanding the metals that you are
working with.
You know, another one, especially in the commercial refrigeration is when we start talking about
dissimilar metals and knowing how much heat to use.
And we're bringing a copper line onto a steel fitting and you know, it can be done, but
it very much is a matter of controlling the heat and using the proper brazing rods.
So whole nother conversation about brazing with dissimilar metals, but being aware of
our scenarios, making sure that if we're working with products that have any potential of having
refrigerant or moisture in them, like a compressor or a filter dryer, cut them out.
Do not try to un-braze those things or just asking for trouble or asking for issues.
All good stuff, Don.
Anything else you want to talk while we're here today?
Oh, another short topic to discuss when we're on the brazing issue.
It amazes me how many times out in the field I have found Schrader cores leaking because
they weren't removed during installation and brazing.
I love the way your mind's thinking right now.
How did we miss that one?
I used to work with a guy.
I couldn't get it past him.
In his brain, as long as he wrapped the wet rag around his service valves, the Schrader's
should be fine.
And I couldn't tell you how many jobs I had to go back on his installations and just replace
Schrader cores that were leaking.
So we need to pay attention to our installations.
Be careful with our heat.
Remove Schrader cores anytime possible.
And if we're working on an expansion valve and it has a mechanical fitting, if it's a
flare or compression style fitting, remove it while we're doing our brazing and try to
keep the heat away from those viable moving mechanical components.
Yeah.
One last thing I wanted to share too is you kind of generated a thought in my head when
we talk about, you see a lot of these TXVs or EEVs that are going all stainless steel
in the refrigeration side of things.
You're more than likely, you may have to use some flux, actual flux, not just in the rods.
And you have to be very careful with that.
Not really so much with brazing, but the using of flux.
Use it sparingly on the male fitting.
Don't glob it up in the female fitting.
Because like moisture, flux is acidic.
And a lot of these things we do on the initial startup, you know this, and I know this, and
most people know this, but the longevity of that system actually really depends on how
it was installed.
Compressors don't fail a day or two or a year later because I didn't install it right.
They're five years down the road and then the homeowner just says, oh, they don't make
them like they used to.
When in fact, because of my not pulling down the 500 microns, not brazing properly, you
know what I mean?
Those kinds of things.
Absolutely.
You get it.
And most people, most instructors obviously know this, but you need to share those stories
with the class and different listeners and stuff like that.
Because they don't, you assume everyone knows, but they don't.
And I'm always learning every day like you.
So anyways, just food for thought.
No, all good practices.
You know, Jason Objute has this saying all the time.
All condenses are made equally and then they're installed.
That's a good one.
Because so much of our equipment is manufactured to very high specifications, very exact tolerances.
So why does one particular brand get a bad rep over another one?
Typically it's in the quality of installations.
You are so, so right.
And it's amazing when you first start out, you don't realize it because when you're an
installer, I mean, just a little off topic here, but you're always dreaming about the
service guy being the service guy.
I mean, you're tickled to death when you get up to move to prevent a maintenance, you know,
like, wow, I'm getting close to service and now I'm going to be on call and boy, I like
those guys.
They, they, they don't have to, you know, beat the beat 10 knockers anymore and all
this other stuff.
But actuality, I always tell installers take pride in what you do because it's, it, everything
you do is going to determine exactly.
And how many times have something failed in your career?
I know mine, it's been a lot.
It all falls back on poor airflow.
I mean, a lot of things that we get calls on, you may have corrected something else,
a thermistor, you know, out of caliper or something like that.
But if you, you, you fix that, the problem re resurfaces a lot of time, it's airflow.
It's things like airflow, airflow, airflow.
It's just, it amazes me how important that is and how many people get that wrong when
they first install something, you know?
Oh yeah, so true.
All right.
Well, Don Gillis, thank you once again for hanging out with us and we appreciate your
time today.
Hey, thanks for having me.
I appreciate it, Cliff.
It's been a pleasure.