TIG Welding Technique - Walking the Cup

hey Jody here today we're talking about walking the cup it's a TIG welding technique what is it what is it good for when would you want to walk the cup when would you not where are its limitations and then we'll also compare some free-handing to walking the cup before we get into it I'll say this much it's primarily for pipe welding that's where it really excels you know for pipe welding but there are some round there are some round parts where it comes in handy too let's do it we're going to do flat parts first this just a regular tea joint affiliate weld the first pass you just kind of wiggle it barely like this to keep that tungsten pointed right in the route pass and then the second pass if you were going to do two passes would be a little bit like this and you can see even what I've done here is put some scratches in there so that we're going to talk about that later some parts that's just not permitted to scratch up an ice machine surface on something that's got a super smooth finish on it but I'm going to do it here just for demonstration purposes I'm using a 3/32 2.4 millimetre wire here I'm using a 3/32 electrode this is a hundred and seventy five amps I'm going to go ahead and weld the first three quarters of an inch or so they're up engines then I'm going to stop and then start walking the cup and that looks something like this it's just a really subtle movement you keep light pressure on the metal with it with the cup you don't want to bear down on it real hardcore you can slip just enough pressure to keep it steady and then wiggle it and when it breaks tension wiggling the cup breaks tension it just kind of progresses you forward just a little bit at a time it's a way of progressing your travel speed very evenly without having to prop on anything because the cup is propped on the metal alright that's the first pass we're going to go ahead and put another pass over that you can see the little transition about a half inch in I went ahead and weld it about a half inch here free hand before I start walking here and I've increased the filler metal size I'm using one-eighth 3.2 millimeter that looks something like this it's all about selecting the right cup size the right electrode extension to to get the right angle let's stuck out there pretty far I guess you could say a rule of thumb you don't want to go too much farther than the inside diameter of your cup but sometimes you do all right that's a fill it well with two passes you see it kind of gives you a nice even ripple pattern if you do it right walking the cup is good for that I did a run of 50 of these where I had this flange to weld on the end of this tube here and it was just really easy to walk the cup just like that and I was a lot less tired at the end of it so so far we've more or less wiggled the cup inside inside the two walls of a Filat weld we're getting ready to walk the cup on the flat surface alright imagine this is your cup and electrode it's very much akin to walking a 55-gallon drum across a shop floor you roll it one direction you kind of tilt it and roll it in the other direction and so it helps to have a big cup for doing a wide weave on a cover pass up say even even something as small as six inch schedule 40 a 12 cup spot the right size not only you get better gas coverage you just got to do a whole lot less wrist motion to get the width and it looks just like the Taco Bell cup doesn't it so it is important to get the right stick out of your electrode and to use the right size cup and maybe a rule of thumb is you know not to extend the electrode really much farther than the inside diameter of the cup sometimes you will have to hold the cup and to hold the torch in odd ways like this upside down sideways like this but just keep in your mind that it's like rolling it's like rolling a 55-gallon drum you have to kind of turn it and roll it and turn it and roll it and that's what is you know it's also called the sort of a figure eight or lazy eight but in my mind I'm rolling a drum across the floor this is a 1-8 filler we're out here on some really heavy wall stainless steel tubing and I am about 130 amps here's a close-up of that I've just scored some hash marks in there to resemble the walls of a pipe we'll get into some pipe welding later on this but for now just it's good to get the fundamentals down of just what walking the cup is I am using the lay wire technique here you can dip in and out as long as you keep the tip of your rod shielded now I'm going to I'm going to try to do the same thing with the tick finger here and you can see right on the end there right next to the weld you can imagine that's getting pretty hot on the metal but my fingers not and so what you're trying to do here is sort of just mimic the same little we've motion the the angle is different because the the angle of the electrode doesn't point differently it's just straight across but gets the job done here's a nice little close-up of that just tying in those little hash marks that I've scored in there to resemble again the bevels of walls of a pipe again about 130 amps here and I'm not in any hurry to get my hand off of there or anything because it's not even not even really warm so you can see that's an option and sometimes you have to do it because there's stuff in the way and you can't walk the cup it won't let you you know move the handle around so being able to freehand as well is very helpful there's a little quick 15-second commercial there is both my products tick finger tick finger XL both of them 100% sourced and assembled in the USA assembled by friends and family you saw me you know just a second ago you saw this is the regular tick finger the exhale we'll look at later you can usually slip two fingers in the XL and it's thicker all right we'll move on to socket welds now we'll do a little cup walking here as well as some some some freehand so again this is just a little fill it well just like we did earlier and you you know just kind of like wiggle it a little bit with light pressure and don't get a whole lot of whip going on that first pass usually you want to use a smaller diameter filler for that root pass to make sure you sink it in there good and then maybe go up to a 1/8 3.2 for the second pass again it's like doing this for the second pass it's a different technique for the second pass then for the first pass it's like rolling a drum across the floor all right we're going to take a look now at doing a little freehand action coming in from the top with the tick finger XL slipped over two fingers you know heat rises and a little nipple like this can get really hot really quick if you don't have something to protect your your glove your bear glove just doesn't cut it it's just an option a lot of times socket wells especially in shipyards you know in ships you just don't have a lot of room everything's tighter and so it's rare to be able to walk the cup on something like this inside of a ship here's a job I did several years ago and here's a little trick here on a ground clamp - if you can't get a ground clamp on something use some bare copper braided wire like that it really really works really well so this is a job I was able to walk the cup on because they were the machine which was going to take a little skim cut anyway and radius that but sometimes you can't walk the cup you know if he wasn't going to take a skim cut off of that I wouldn't wanted to put those scratches on there if that surface was going to be left as is this is a this is an example of where I would like to walk the cup because it was so hot but again a nice finished machine surface the machinist didn't want those scratches on the on the part to deal with and have to buff out so I didn't do it I preheated it to 500 degrees propped with the take finger and did a little freehand pass like this at about 107 the amps for the first pass and then came over it with a second pass about the same heat maybe a five or ten more amps just a nice little little freehand weave pass tried to make it look as nice as possible I would have loved to walk the cup on this it would have probably looked a lot nicer but it did come out okay so the moral of the story is you know sometimes you can walk the cup and it's a great technique sometimes you can't it's great to know both techniques to be able to do both sometimes the metal gets super hot and a tick finger comes in super handy I appreciate your support and I appreciate you watching my online store is at well monger com see you next time you

Channel: weldingtipsandtricks

Views: 1,941,097

Rating: 4.850266 out of 5

Keywords: Tig Welding, Welding, Welding videos, tig welding technique, walk the cup, walking the cup, how to walk the cup, tig welding stainless, gtaw, gas tungsten arc

Id: HgqIWKn5gr0

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2017