Regulator, pea shooter and torch pea shooter reading

[Hudmut]

Just this week I picked up a pea shooter flow meter that goes on the end of my torch and now I really do not have a clue what flow rate I am using. All my meters give different readings I get there will be some differences between them but not at this lever.

If I open my bottle and set the regulator to say 15LP then set me machine to do a gas test and have my regulator mounted pea shooter wide open it will say 20LP if I now set that pea shooter to 15LP and test my torch with my new torch pea shooter I have a flow rate back up at 20LP ?

Am I and would you take my regulator mounted flow meter as law or the one that I can use to test my torch flow rate because right now I don't know what to believe should I remover some thing here and work from just one gauge /flow meter or should I be doing some things different to satisfy my want and need to know what my gas flow rate is because its a very important part of TIG welding as you all know and I don't have a clue right now what my gas rate I's.

 

[waddycall]

Could be due to pressure differences either end of the line? I'd go with the reading from the pea shooter at the torch.

 

[BrokenBiker]

ignore anything at the bottle end of things, just go with the pea shooter on the torch, that is telling you what is actually coming out of the torch.

 

[hotrodder]

As above the flowmeter you want to pay most attention to is the peashooter over the gas cup... regulators do pressure not flow and while the two are related calibrating the output gauge to read flow never works that well. Thorpe tube flowmeters (peashooters) are more accurate but measuring the flow in two different places is gonna give different results when there's gas solenoids and other stuff between the two measurement points

Gas flow rates aren't as important as they're sometimes made out to be, the rule of thumb worth remembering is 'less is usually more'. 15 - 20L/min is waaaaaay too much, 5 - 7 L/min is in the ball park for most stuff sometimes even less* rarely more unless using a giant cup on a large gas lens with a foot of tungsten stick out

* i was welding 'inside' a cylinder head today using a wp24 (wp20 too big to fit) and had to turn the flow down to get a workable weldpool. At my usual 5 or 6 ish L/min the cylinderhead port was acting like a venturi and drawing air in. Blocking the port wasn't an option as for access reasons i was feeding the filler through it

 

[Hudmut]

Thank you that's all I needed to know and as every body has said the same thing there is nothing else for me to get confused about.

 

[BrokenBiker]

my rule of thumb is if you an hear a light hissing and the weld doesn't look burnt it is ok