I Do This For Better Torch Cutting.

welcome back everyone today we're going to be talking about torch cutting i'm going to be answering questions you guys have asked me questions like how do you make a good cut with the wrong size cutting tip or how do you set pressures if your regulator gauge is broken or you just can't read it why do i get such bad cuts when cutting square tube these answers along with many others we're not gonna find in a textbook so i'm gonna show you what i've learned in my past 20 years of experience and hopefully help you out the first question is how do you make good torch cuts with the wrong size tip i find myself handicapped a lot when in a man basket or on a ladder i'm not able to come down and change torch tips for every different thickness of material so i've kind of found a way to manipulate the torch to get me the best cut possible so let me show you how i do it for this first demonstration i want to use a double lot tip which is typically designed to cut quarter inch plate and i'm going to try to cut three quarters of an inch thick plate steel with it and we're going to probably find i'm not going to have a lot of success running the standard inches per minute that it's recommended for at 20 to 30 inches per minute what's going to happen is i'm going to have blow back because i'm traveling too fast and the torch just does not have enough oof to get through the plate the workaround for this is to put a lot of preheat into the metal that you're going to cut try to get that temperature pretty hot and then we're going to really want to slow down our travel speed somewhere in the 4 to 5 inches per minute range and that's going to allow us to make that material separation in that worst case scenario the cut quality is going to be pretty poor but if you do just need to make that material separation this is the technique that's going to allow you to get there the next technique i want to talk about is cutting even thicker material like this inch and a half inch shaft i've run into this problem in the maintenance field trying to cut a shaft off when the bearing is seized on and somebody hands you a way too small a torch tip if you try to cut the optimum cutting speed for this torch tip you're just going to get blow back and you're never going to make it through so the option is to make a weave pattern or an s shape whatever you like to call it this is essentially going to widen the kerf allowing the oxygen and the slag all to get blown out the bottom and not weld itself back together again and essentially getting good material separation if you're looking for that buttery smooth torch cut you're probably not going to get it with this technique but you can get that material separation if you need it what happens if you have a torch tip too large for your material i'm gonna put in a number three torch tip which is typically designed to cut up to two inch plate steel and i'm going to try to cut a quarter inch with it i need to find a way to make this thin metal thicker the best way to do that is just by angling the torch head increasing the distance between the top of the plate and the bottom allowing us to put a lot of heat into that little area and giving us a nice clean cut we get some really good benefits by doing this our travel speed increases i did the calculations and i'm running 45 inches per minute with this technique i also find that the torch tip doesn't get dirty as often which is quite helpful it probably has something to do when that mill scale pops and explodes it doesn't have a direct line right inside the torch tip which i like let's take a look at angle iron and how i attack that i want to move the torch very minimal so i like the leg down technique that means i just have to cut up one side and down the other you almost have to think of this like a piece of flat bar that just has a little fold in it you just need to travel from right to left let's take a look at some wide flanges or i-beam and how i attack that you have the web and the flange and generally those are two different thicknesses of material so switching back and forth from tip to tip is not really convenient i like the beam laying on its side this gives me torch access to all the surfaces without having to roll the beam around you have to be comfortable cutting out a position with this technique and i like to start on one flange cut that all the way through and then move to the other side and make that cut also and then i need to connect the dots on the web now that i have two points i need to meet up generally the web when you're cutting it is much thinner than the flanges so this is why i'm angling the torch tip get that optimum cut as you can see you can still get pretty good results with an oversized torch tip a smaller tip would have definitely given me a better cut quality let's take a look at square tubing this shape can actually be kind of tricky with a big torch tip there's going to be a lot of extra slag that's going to end up inside the tube that you have to cut through this is going to reduce the cut quality after you've made your first two side cuts i like to minimize this by using the big torch to my advantage and attacking it from the outside in trying to blow most of the slag out of the kerf instead of into the tube this seems to generally overall help the cut quality and then i don't have a lot of clean up on the inside of the tube later let's move on to the next shape round tubing this is my opinion the most difficult shape to cut with a cutting torch we're faced with the same problem we had on square tube is that we're just gonna be blowing slag inside of the tubing that we're gonna have to try to cut through later and then we have the added difficulty of maneuvering that torch tip 360 degrees all the way around this whole shape this is just a really tough shape to cut to get started we're going to need a visual line to track and follow my pipe wrap is packed away somewhere so a piece of electrical tape or something wide that you can transfer a nice good line around is what you need sticking with the theory that slag is our enemy i'm going to start at the bottom and work my way up that way i'm into virgin material and try to stay away from that slag i'm going to try to do it in two cuts a left and a right while still trying to increase the material thickness by having that high attack angle looks like my tube cutting skills are a little bit rusty but i was able to make some material separation with an acceptable cut so i think that's a success in this situation your oxygen regulator gauge has stopped working or just can't read it anymore so you have no idea where to set the pressure at in my technique we're gonna let the torch tell us where to set the regulator at so let me show you how it works what i'm looking for is a really long flame jumping off the torch tip if the pressure is set too low the flame is going to be short if the pressure's too high it's also going to be short the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle and we need to find it so let me show you how the first thing i do is get the torch running just as normal crack the settling get it lit get a nice clean flame without any soot coming out of it the next thing is to get the oxygen flowing with the crack of the knob about a quarter turn if you got oxygen flowing at this point great if you don't you need to start turning your regulator knob in until you have some oxygen coming out we don't really care what the pressure is at this point but we need oxygen we're going to start honing in on a neutral flame so turn the regulator until you see the inner cones suck all the way in and have a nice short cone coming off the tip we're almost done it's now time to hit that oxygen lever and hold it keep turning the regulator knob up and down until that flame grows to its longest point and there you have it your regulator is now set let's see where i ended up yes 25 that is exactly where the victor torch chart says i should be amazing in order for this trick to work you have to have a clean tip so if you got a new one throw it in if not clean that used one the next thing we're going to look at is what happens if you're a settling gauge is bad so let's try to set that pressure next first thing i like to back the regulator all the way out and then cracking the settling knob a quarter of a turn this is going to purge the line and give us a good starting point so now i need to get the gas flowing so i'm going to turn the regulator just a little bit until i can hear it come out of the torch nozzle now i'm ready to light the torch and it's probably going to be pretty but that's okay because we're going to dial in the regulator until all the soot clears up and it's a nice clean flame and that should be where the pressure needs to be looks like i ended up at six psi and four to five was my target so overall i think this was a success practicing some of these less than ideal conditions is probably really going to help you guys on your day-to-day normal torch cutting and that way you guys are going to be ready to face anything that gets thrown at you in the field and hopefully i'm able to help you guys perform a little bit better when you make your next cut if you guys like the goggles and the big gauntlet gloves that i use i'll leave a link in the description below for you to find and i'll see you guys on the next one you

Channel: Fireball Tool

Views: 669,601

Keywords: fireball, tool, Fireball tool, Welding, torch tips, torch cutting, oxygen, acetylene, broken gauge, fix a broken gauge, fire cutting, how to torch cut, torch cutting tricks, professional torch, torch cutting secrets, help torch cut, learn to torch, broken oxygen, broken acetylene, cut tube steel, cut I beam, torch through thick, torch through thin, cut circle tube, torching plate, torch goggles, gloves for torch cutting, welding tricks, learn torch secrets, flame cutting

Id: dJvPeE04Imo

Length: 8min 46sec (526 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 25 2021