Regulator with flow rate guage

[Fishsticks]

I'm completely new to CO2 (and to planted tanks) and have just bought this regulator to put together a fire extinguisher setup:

CALOR GAS CO2 TWO STAGE TWO GAUGE REGULATOR | eBay

I bought it on the basis that Calor Gas is a known brand so it can't be that bad, and it gave me the opportunity to build a dual-stage setup for not that much more than a single stage.

It's just arrived and I'm really surprised to see that the output gauge displays flow rate rather than pressure. The scale is measured in litres or cubic feet per hour (0 - 1100 L/h).

I'm not sure if this is just a different scale on a conventional pressure gauge (i.e. the amount of flow that would be expected to a welder with the regulator set at that pressure) or some more exotic kind of gauge that actually detects the rate of flow. To be honest I don't really care since I know the regulator will produce a suitable level of pressure and I'll be measuring the output with a drop counter anyway. However, it makes me wonder if the second stage is some kind of flow regulator and not exactly what I had in mind when I bought it.

Can anyone with more experience please shed some light (and reassure me that my regulator is suitable)?

Thanks!

 

[Fishsticks]

Sorry - a supplemental question. I've been looking on Ebay and all the needle valves I can find appear to be inline (i.e. they take flexible hoses as input and output). I'd like to use one that is threaded but they seem much harder to find (outside the US, at least).

It occurs to me that I might be being stupid here - will the hose connectors on most valves unscrew to reveal a thread?

 

[wazuck]

Ok first off you need to know the thread fitting. I would take an educated guess at the output on the regulator will be 1/2 bspt. This would mean you then need to reduce it to fit the next part. This could either be an elbow, hex nipple or a solenoid valve all these parts should be 1/8bspt or 1/8npt depending on which fittings you find easier to track down. After that you could add elbows, hex nipples or the needle valve/metering valve. Then you can add a check valve then either a compression tube fitting or a reg mounted bubble counter. I am in the process of building two dual stage regulators so far I have both regs, bubble counters and metering valves. So I still have reducers, elbows, check valves and solenoids to go. I'm not sure about the answer to your flow question. Both my regs are measured in psi and bar.

This is my reg mounted bubble counter.

Regs

 

[Fishsticks]

Thanks Wazuck - but my question is really whether people who are screwing their needle valves into their reg/solenoid (either directly or using an adapter) are using the needle valves that are sold for connection to CO2 line, or something else.

For example, this is typical of the needle valves that I see on Ebay:

The two connectors are for flexible CO2 line, but if you unscrew the nut part then the connectors are of course threaded. Are people discarding the nut and using these threaded connectors to connect them to the other components (with the barb for the CO2 line sitting inside the join) or are they buying completely different valves that don't have CO2 line connectors and instead simply have threaded ends?

Does that make sense? Not sure I've described it too well!