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Hey thanks for the reply Steve!
That is good to know, I will run a couple beads on some thin flat stock that isn't a can to see the difference. I saw the Pyrex cups on the Internet, they look like they could prove fairly useful. I will have to pick a few up and give them a try. Replacements are fairly expensive, and seeing as I work with Pyrex for a living I might be able to make my own. Might even be worth trying to make and sell some, I'm sure welders are breaking them quite often. There might be a market for some differently shaped ones also (flared out, or necked down like a standard alumina cup) the ones I have seen are just straight tubing.
What do you think? I would appreciate any suggestions...
Miller 330 a/bp and Marquette 180 amp "Redi-arc".... Old school
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I see an untapped market in Pyrex cups...

They mount to the gas lens with an o-ring, which automatically means they can be rotated relative to the torch, so they could be "shaped", to provide trailing gas coverage on a pipe or tube weld, for example. A chevron shape for a fillet weld... an inverse chevron for an outside corner (always a shielding challenge). The possibilities are endless. I often customize my ceramic cups for specific needs, but I can't see through them as with Pyrex.

The downside is Pyrex can and will melt at TIG welding temperatures.

If you get rich on the idea, remember me... :lol:

Steve S
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Stahlin.Studios wrote:Hey thanks for the reply Steve!
That is good to know, I will run a couple beads on some thin flat stock that isn't a can to see the difference. I saw the Pyrex cups on the Internet, they look like they could prove fairly useful. I will have to pick a few up and give them a try. Replacements are fairly expensive, and seeing as I work with Pyrex for a living I might be able to make my own. Might even be worth trying to make and sell some, I'm sure welders are breaking them quite often. There might be a market for some differently shaped ones also (flared out, or necked down like a standard alumina cup) the ones I have seen are just straight tubing.
What do you think? I would appreciate any suggestions...

Hell yeah, that would be cool! I've never seen glass tig cups, but it would be a hell of a tool to have! Sometimes you can't see what you're doing and glass cups would eliminate that for the most part. How would those be made, from a glass blowing perspective?
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Nathan, Glass TIG cup already exist. Look at CK industries:

http://www.ckworldwide.com/

They even have a microtorch with a glass cup.

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Yeah, I did a quick google on them. Looks really cool, I may be asking work if we can get a few. You mentioned problems with the cup melting, have you experienced it? That could be inconvenient.
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It's not happend to me, I've never used them.

Another poster here mentioned using them on aluminum, getting close in, and melting one a bit. Seemed like a process error to me, as these cups and diffusers are designed for long stick-outs.

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How long you been doing this stuff, Otto? You're pretty smart about it. What kind of work do you do?
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Owner/welder at Homegrown Metal Fab

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Northern Industrial1HP 3/4" chuck, 16 speed drill press
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I've been welding in one form or another for 30 years, sometimes as a small part of my job, sometimes my sole job, sometimes just for my own projects.

Three of the last four years, I've been working on cryogenic tanker-trailers, liquid hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and argon. It's the most interesting work I've done. Welding is only about 20% of the job for me, so I find when I have to do some coded work, I have to practice a bit. Sometimes I'll spend as much as four weeks hunting for a vacuum leak, and then the next week making the repair, so I'm out of practice. Other times, though, I'm doing pipe and valve work for a week or two at a time.

So, sometimes my welds look like I know what I'm doing, others more like a fourth-week student! :lol:

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Interesting. What is the process for finding leaks on those kinds of vessels?
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nathan wrote:Interesting. What is the process for finding leaks on those kinds of vessels?
Since the trailers are under extreme vacuum, I use a mass spectrometer tuned to helium, in conjuntion with a vacuum pump. A helium atom is actually smaller than a hydrogen molecule (since H occurs as H2 in nature). The mass spec is hooked to the vacuum pump, and a suspected leak area has helium introduced to it. The machine will pick up even a handfull of helium atoms leaking into the vacuum space.

Steve S
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