Walking the cup

[JP223]

Hello guys!

I'm still in school for welding. I like free hand work with, Tig. Im a "shade tree gunsmith"
free hand skills, comes in handy. I'm having some trouble with, walking the Tig cup. I'm still on flat plate. I know I need to keep doing and, doing it. Until, I get it right. Is there any tips or, tips? Thanks again for all your help and, info.

Patrick,

[sn0border88]

If your cup is getting hung up and skipping along (which was my biggest prblem) you can either lighten up on your torch hand or try putting some soapstone on the cup to help it slide better,

I found what works best for me is to take it slow with less heat and just focus on getting a good rhythm. Then again I cant walk on plate very well, but pipe I can do a pretty nice job.

[El_Lloydeo]

im just the opposite. im good on plate and pipe i dont do as well. i never do it though either. im a true believer that if you want to be good at a certain type of welding that you have to find your own way ( but a correct way ) to do it. burning pound after pound of metal is the way to do it.send pics. the guys here will get ya headin in the right direction.

[Craig in Denver]

Stickout is different for every joint type and position, don't be afraid to try different stickouts. I welded in class tonight and rarely saw the tungsten, the SO was so short.

[hpfiend]

I found it easier to put my thumb over the torch, lock my wrist, set the piece parallel with the table and use the edge of the table as a guide and freehand the torch at about 20 degrees. The only problem with this method is the more you weld your guide table gets uncomfortably hot and your wrist starts to burn more than using a short filler rod. It seems like I would end up getting too close and touching and contaminating my tungsten if I dragged the cup as the angle would change and it would pivot on the cup. I am just a beginner as well though and may end up using the cup with more practice... it is basically the only way in a 90 degree fillet weld. I did find that by straightening my back and putting more distance between the work and my helmet I would put less weight on my wrist and it was easier to drag smoother- but I always found myself trying to get closer to see and getting stuck half way- I likely needed to lighten up my helmet shade but was afraid my eyes would suffer later so never did- may be an issue for you as well. I can't wait to get my own machine to practice some more. I took training at lincoln electric for a week.

But as others said how far the tungsten protrudes is very important as well. The rule of thumb is about 2-3 times the tungsten diameter but sometimes more in a 90 degree fillet weld.

Laters,
Andrew

[schofner413]

i am an aerospace tig welder in ct and i started fresh outta school last january. I have certs. on ss, inconel, and titanium for manual tig and auto tig, as well as auto plasma on ss and inco. I am really interested in becoming a pipe welder. I have lots of experiance with tig, but not so much with stick or flux core. I am very interested in learning orbital pipe welding as i was told it was similer to the auto tig i do now. I dont have much experiance welding pipe other than with tig...(thin wall tubing with square groove %100 penetration) Any suggestions on what I should do?
Also is there any demand for an "orbital rig welder", or does that not even exist?

[mjmiller1824]

Personally when I'm doing a fillet weld with tig, I find that dragging the cup just doesn't work I usually use little circles as I come down the plates. It gives me good penetration and I never have porosity issues if I've cleaned the plates well. And for mild steel I usually use ER70 Sil for filler.

[wirehunt]

Originally Posted by schofner413

i am an aerospace tig welder in ct and i started fresh outta school last january. I have certs. on ss, inconel, and titanium for manual tig and auto tig, as well as auto plasma on ss and inco. I am really interested in becoming a pipe welder. I have lots of experiance with tig, but not so much with stick or flux core. I am very interested in learning orbital pipe welding as i was told it was similer to the auto tig i do now. I dont have much experiance welding pipe other than with tig...(thin wall tubing with square groove %100 penetration) Any suggestions on what I should do?
Also is there any demand for an "orbital rig welder", or does that not even exist?

Yep there is work for this type of thing, it's now used a lot on piping barges, and IF you can get in the training is often supplied. It's also used on bigger bore pipe lines on shore.

[schofner413]

Originally Posted by wirehunt

Yep there is work for this type of thing, it's now used a lot on piping barges, and IF you can get in the training is often supplied. It's also used on bigger bore pipe lines on shore.

being that i have no real work experiance with pipe welding, what would you suggest i do with the welding background that i have......if i wanted to become a pipe welder?

[Donald Branscom]

Forget about "walking the cup" it is not permitted in some shops.

Everytime i talk to someone that comes up to me at my shop and they start asking if i can "walk the cup" or do i know what it is, I immediately know they are beginners and are trying to impress me with the fact that they know about it, or can do it,not even knowing it is not desirable.

Walking the ceramic cup causes the torch to get too hot because the ceramic cup is in contact with the metal near the welding pool. Also the little indentations made in or near the weld from the edge of the cup are considered discontinuities.
In some circles it is considered a "hillbilly" trick.

Learn to weld the RIGHT way and it will increase your chances of being hired.
Don't use a crutch.

[Donald Branscom]

Originally Posted by schofner413

i am an aerospace tig welder in ct and i started fresh outta school last january. I have certs. on ss, inconel, and titanium for manual tig and auto tig, as well as auto plasma on ss and inco. I am really interested in becoming a pipe welder. I have lots of experiance with tig, but not so much with stick or flux core. I am very interested in learning orbital pipe welding as i was told it was similer to the auto tig i do now. I dont have much experiance welding pipe other than with tig...(thin wall tubing with square groove %100 penetration) Any suggestions on what I should do?
Also is there any demand for an "orbital rig welder", or does that not even exist?

Orbital TIG is used on reactor tubing.
There is a manufacturer in the SF Bay area that uses it to weld
hydraulic lines for aircraft.
It is just another welding head for TIG and it still needs to be tended to by welding personel.
There has to be some specific reason to use it, because it does take additional time to set up.
It is used in manufacturing. There are examples in Welding Journal magazine.

[El_Lloydeo]

some shops wont have it any other way. some shops wont allow it. id say make yourself more valuable by learning both ways. knowledge is power.

[Supe]

Not this "walking the cup is the devil's business" again. If they're welding pipe, they need to know how to walk the cup.

There is also much more to orbital TIG than smallbore piping and autogenous tube welds. Most notably is its use for high energy piping in the power industry, with narrow groove gaining a lot of ground on heavy walled pipe and creep strength enhanced ferritics.

My advice in that regard, is learn to become at least a half decent manual pipe welder before dabbling in the orbital aspect. It's much more difficult to adjust parameters on the fly to compensate for poor fitup, etc with an orbital unit than it is manually, so being able to know how the puddle should look when welding open root pipe is critical.

It's also important to make a distinction between what kind of pipe welder you're looking to be. If you're going to weld cross country pipelines, the approach you take will be very different from someone who welds piping during plant construction/outages.

[mjmiller1824]

I seriously have never heard of "walking the cup" then again I've only had to weld one set of pipe in my life. It was hell. Fortunately the pipe had to hold 0 pressure, but it took me 3 days to tig 4 joints on 3" 316 alot of that time was set up trying to get the 45s to lay in line where I wanted them.. Any tips on learning this walking the cup thing? Or other tips for welding pipe?

[hotrodder]

Different size cups will sit lower or higher in the bevel, can be used to alter tungsten stickout and will also have an effect on torch movement versus wrist movement. Experiment.

Mjmiller,
There was a thread on here a while ago that contained several videos. Search the forum for 'walking the cup' with posts by Gaustin- he posted very clear video of both the torch movement and a short weld using the technique

[mjmiller1824]

Thanks, I'll be sure to check it out.

[zapster]

Walking the cup..Whatever it is called..
Is all in the wrist..
If the cup is on the metal then you fail.
Plain and simple.

Hard to explain but if you actually watched someone that knows how to do it then you would get the idea..

Lets leave it at that.

Yeah I know how to do it.

...zap!

[enlpck]

Walking the cup: The cup shouldn't be sliding, really. The contact should be very light, and there is a slight roll (several people have said 'its in the wrist') with your wrist, and a swing at the same time. Try this: make a fist, then stick out your thumb and pinkie. Imagine the tips of the fingers are the contact points. With your elbow above a tabletop, let the tips of the thumb and pinkie touch the table. Rock your fist a little side to side while twisting the fist a little with each rock, so that your hand walks along the table on the tips like a really bad cartoon. This is the general motion.

Contrary to Donald's opinion, it is quite commonly done, and is prohibited in only a few specialty areas, and is sometimes the ONLY way to do the job, such as when working around a tube when there isn't room for both a mirror and the torch. Work the back walking the cup, sighting through the gap in the prep on the front, then do the front. Fill gets tricky, but the technique is the same (I can't do it. I work with a few guys that can, feeding filler around one side, working the torch around the other, all by braille) Walking the cup SHOULD NOT leave 'little indentations' if done properly. Nor should it overheat the cup, nor should there be any contamination in the weld from abrading the cup (another criticism I have heard). It is done every day on thousands of welds, ranging from jobs that amount to just sticking stuff together, to joining primary cooling lines in nuke plants.


....

A couple other applications for orbital is sanitary piping and buildup. When the salesmen come around, and at the AWS section meetings, sanitary is pretty much the only application they talk about anymore. When used for things like shaft buildup, there is a high quality deposit with good control over dilution, hardness, and machinability. Often no heat treat is needed.

[JP223]

Thanks guys for all your help! I like to free hand. My school is kinda like a old school pipe fitter class. I'm still trying to get the hang of it.

[wirehunt]

Donald's favorite pet hate hahahaha. And here I am walking the cup to ASME IX........... (oh, and there all passing the booms).

Why belittle a technique that is required in some field's Donald? What, haven't got it under control yourself?

[lugweld]

At one time, very learned and well meaning men thought that driving an "autocar" was dangerous and posed serious risk to the public. So, they instituted many laws where when an car was to be driven down public streets with a man walking in front with a red bandana on a stick to "warn" others of the danger. Those learned men died as well as their favored horses. The cars survived, because they were much more practical and didn't need to be fed and watered everynight.

Welding has seen changes in recommendation just as every other industry that has matured. Sometimes, even now, there is no "right" and no "wrong" way to weld in this results driven industry. IF it passes, then it is the right way...If it fails, then it is the wrong way.

Personal opinion and experience weigh so heavily here that it seems to me that if one has achieved success with a particular method, then that is their "god". They worship the method without realizing others may have had a different experience because of the immense numbers of variables involved in the welding process. Sometimes a person just gets lucky or unlucky as the case may be. Unfortunately, for them, this becomes the basis of opinion for or against a particular method or practice.

It is also a "regional" element to accepted welding techniques. This is partly due to the predjudice, but can be attributed to climatic elements, localy instructional methods, contstruction codes that may have been archaic or possibly freshly decided. If from construction codes, then many times we know that "codes" have a political nature to themselves and not necessarily based off of hard evidence, only "possiblities" and wrong conclusions drawn from sketchy facts. etc. If from local instructional methods, it is almost as a parent has a child, there are certain "dna" that the child(apprentice) recieves from his parent (mentor/instructor). Through the passing on of skills, one learns and clings to a workable method because that is what was taught to him and is the method that he naturally favors. It is also the method he will defend, teach and pass on to his grave. That is why local methods are so strong in one area and rejected in others. It even somewhat affects AWS recommendations...They all started by an effort to standardize methods. But you cannot rule out personal preference that took priority when two equally GOOD methods had to be evaluated and one selected.


That is why there are some pipeliners running up hill and in other parts of the world running down hill.

One might as well ask which way a toilet drains when it flushes? Anyone want to give an opinion about that?

[wirehunt]

Originally Posted by lugweld

One might as well ask which way a toilet drains when it flushes? Anyone want to give an opinion about that?

Clock wise down here

[Ironmower]

I can "walk" the cup, "run" the cup, "throw" the cup and even "piss" in the cup!!!! Hell I'll TIG-it in the mirrow if you like!!!!!!! Sorry for the smarta$$ post,,,,,, I'm P. W. I. !!!!!!!!!

[dougspair]

...well...toilets drain in the opposite direction when you cross the equator....

Walking the cup....I've done plenty on carbon pipe, Chrome-moly, stainless and Inconel.....never left any marks on the base metal, and the cup is usually WAY hotter (like red hot) then any metal it will touch....just keep the hand pressure light....and the usual pink alumina cups shouldn't leave anything to contaminate the weld....they are harder and melt at higher temp then any metal you'll be using them on.......

[lugweld]

Doug,
Yep...
But which way do they drain ON the equator?