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Hi Larry, Oxygen can not burn. Oxygen is a accelerant to support combustion of a fuel source. Take away the fuel source, oxygen will just sit there. To support combustion we need to have three items: a fuel source, a oxygen source, ignition. What happen is, your acetylene valve on the mixing body is leaking enternally. You probably turned off the acetylene first, then turned off the oxygen. What this did was lower the vapor pressure inside of the mixing body thus sucking the flame back inside the mixing chamber. That is why you always shutt off the oxygen first then the acetylene. Since the mixing body has both acetylene and oxygen it kept burning inside the mxing body up into the hose to where it finally poked a hole into the oxygen hose. At the same time both gases expanded thus a large flame was shot out the small hole in the hose until the fuel was burnt off. So where did the fuel source come from since you turned off the cylinders? You shut off the main cylinder valves. That left aectylene gas inside the pressure regulator. Until this fuel source was used up the fire continued to burn. Had you also backed out the pressure regulator handles then that would have shut off most of the gases and caused a much smaller explosion. Thats provided your regulators and cylinder valves were not leaking. Why did the fire burn up into the oxygen hose and not the acetylene hose? Cause acetylene needs oxygen to burn. Needless to say you need to have the mixing body and cutting head rebuilt. You also need to test your regulators and cylinder valves to make sure there not leaking. Why didn't the check valves and flame arrestors stop the flame? Probably stuck open due to dirt or corrossion. The hose needs replaced and NOT repaired. You don't know how weak the hose is on the inside where the fire was or was heat damaged. T_Bone
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