#12 TIG Cup - aka the Furick Fupa 12 

Here is a quick story about how I learned that a #12 TIG cup could help improve my welds.

Way back in 1990, I switched industries from pipe welding to aerospace repair welding at Delta Airlines TechOps.

My first day on the job...One of the first things I noticed was almost every tig torch in that shop was a water cooled 20 and had a #7 gas lens setup and a 1/16" tungsten. Thats because most of the parts only required around 5-70 amps.

The #7 gas lens worked ok for most of the jobs except for titanium and for those jobs we had specialty cups machined out of PTFE aka teflon.  (Those cups were 2 inches wide and we packed them with wire screen diffuser material and turned the flowmeter wide open.)

There were no cups like the furick fupa 12 tig cup back then.  At least none that fit a water cooled 20 tig torch.

Then one day I saw a guy using a #12 tig cup with a home made diffuser screen taped to the end of the cup.

He had found an old box of 12 tig cups that fit a water cooled 20 torch.

Those #12 tig cups didn't even come with a diffuser screen!!

They wouldn't even weld out of the box without ruining the tungsten and spitting sparks...but they worked great with a diffuser screen taped on the end.

He was welding a case made from inconel 718 and he had to use a really long stick out to reach the weld area so he found a #12 cup and cut out some wire screen and formed it around the cup and used high temp fiberglass tape to hold it in place.  The screen was actually on the very end of the cup but it worked and he got the job done.

Seeing how much better that cup worked than a standard #7 gas lens got me asking our tooling analyst to find us some #12 tig cups that already had a screen diffuser.

No luck at first but he kept asking other repair shops  and eventually found some #12 tig  cups that had an additional diffuser screen pressed in and that were made to fit the 45v43 1/16" gas lens  for a 20 water cooled torch.

Everyone loved these #12 tig cups.  we used them for practically every job.

Something about that larger envelope of argon really help clean up the weld puddle.

Especially on dirty stainless like 17-7ph.

Even hot section parts made from hastelloy X that had been service for years welded much cleaner wth the large 12 tig cups. 

There was one Hastelloy X combustion chamber part that welded really nasty with a #7 cup  but with the new #12 cups, the difference was night and day.

It wasn't until around 2014 that larger tig cups like a 12 furick cup became readily available for 20 style torches and also worked with stubby gas lens parts.

That was the year I met Michael Furick at Fabtech in Atlanta and he handed me a clear #12 tig cup to try out.

After I used the fupa 12 tig cup in several videos to make sure it was a high quality product, I started selling his fupa12 cups here at weldmonger.com

I made sure to add them to several kits for both 9/20 tig torches and 17 style tig torches.

I saw the huge benefit of using a 12 tig cup way when I did repair welds on aircraft parts and now welders all over are seeing the benefits too and are using a fupa 12 tig cup for 4130 chromoly chassis welds, automotive exhaust parts made from stainless, inconel, and even titanium, and lots of other high end tig work like tool and die and even metal artwork.

Furick 12 tig cups are available in both clear and ceramic versions.  Both versions provide the same gas coverage and ability to use a long stick out when needed.

Click here or image below to learn more about Furick cups