8010g advice

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Just came across a pipeline job and they use 3/16 8010g to cap haven't ran much of it and am having trouble a 3 o'clock and then at about 4 or 430. I'm running a 65 redface at third and 60 seems to be the best spot. Anybody have any advice ie. Heat settings or technique that would help.
Reply:It would help if you said what exact problems you're having.  lolBut I can imagine its concave cap, dropped ripples, bug holes, and arc-breaks.  Is that pretty close?  If it is then I might try to explain some of those and what usually causes them.Concave cap can be from a lot of reasons I'm afraid.Filler to low.Filler to high.Heat too hot.Heat too low.Wrong rod angle.Bad rods.Low voltage from your machine.Traveling too fast.Traveling too slow.And the list goes on and on I'm afraid.You see there is something you're not thinking about here and it is very important.  An experienced welder - by the time he gets around to filling the weld out - has a pretty good idea how that machine is welding, how the rods are acting, what the other conditions are around him, etc, on what its more-or-less going to act like when he caps the weld - - and he prepares for that now with the fillers hes running.A machine you can't turn down because it breaks arc means he's going to haft to cap this weld hotter than he would want to, so it needs to be filler differently to make up for that problem.  Rods that are wet or bad can be a real pain to cap with, so the weld needs to be filled differently.  I've even had machines that were so wet you couldn't cap a properly filled weld because you couldn't get over it without making the cap concave so you just capped a lower than usual filler (which it would get over better) then planned on recapping the side anyway to compensate for the problem.First thing I'd do is find out what amps and volts I was welding with.  If you're using 3/16" then the cap should be somewhere close to 140-145 amps and 26 volts.  This is assuming you're on at least 20" .375 wall pipe and X52 or greater.  On smaller - thinner pipe then it probably won't be that hot.  Maybe closer to 130 amps (or less) and 26-28 volts.If the volts are lower than that then yes, I can see how you might be having trouble fighting gravity because the puddle is going to be wet, regardless what you do.  lolGood luck manLaterLast edited by slowhand; 05-19-2011 at 06:31 PM.