Cylinder Testing
More information to follow about the specifics and details of the testing requirements.
In Summary
A scuba cylinder must be hydrostatically tested every five years and must be visually inspected every two and a half years. This servicing must now have the cylinder valve serviced at each of these tests. For a diver this means the cylinder will follow the cycle...
2008 Jan - Date of Manufacture and TEST (there is a difference on some cylinders)
2010 July - Visual TEST & Valve Service
2013 Jan - Hydro TEST & Valve Service (this TEST will include a Visual)
2015 July - Visual TEST & Valve Service
etc
For Aluminium Cylinders the cylinder should at each of these TESTs also have a thread crack Eddy Current test that looks for microscpoic cracks in the cylinder neck. The Serial Number of the test kit will be stamped on the cylinder by way of proof of such a test and tracability back to the test gear and calibration.
For Land Use Only (scuba) cylinders only need to have the Five yearly Hydrostatic (both Steel and Aluminium). Medical Cylinders with Pin Index valves fall into this category.
Oxygen Cleaning needs to be done annually for all scuba cylinders that need to have Nitrox, Trimix, Heliox, Diluent (other than Air) and Oxygen. It is debatable that a dedicated Oxygen Cylinder that only has Oxygen Clean regulatros in use requires cleaning every year as this cleaning is to remove contaminents that have been introduced through filling from detritus and worse from any system employing oil based compressors no matter how well filtered. As so few systems are totally Oil free/Oil less in the UK and also so few have 100% filtration down to Viral/Bacterium levels of 3 micron to prevent detritus is largely the reason why the common practice of insisting everything is O2 cleaned annually without distinction of use. We know our state of the art system is rare to employ this filtration, be Oil Free/Oil Less and employ many other safety features designed in to handle 100% Oxygen and a wide range of cylinders and cylinder uses with considerable risk reduction.
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