oh hehe sorry that was a rhetorical question I had already answered myself. I was tasked with estimating welding cost, travel speed, arc on time etc etc. I was just checking my numbers because I realized I never verified filler wire weight in terms of lbs/inch (which goes directly into deposition rate).

Anyways I was using the averaged deposition rate and wire used to create a theoretical "arc time" the minimum amount of time you would need to burn all that filler and how long of welds you would create. I used this against total welding production hours and actuall length traveled to check for errors, finally we're also checking arc-on time by actual observation so as to cross check those numbers to see how they all add up. 

You're right about variance between welders though. The minimum observed deposition rate was 3.25 pounds (short circuit) to about 10.5 pounds for spray transfer. Likewise the minimum observed travel speed was 8IPM to 32IPM which is not good from a numbering average aspect. I was surprised the welder was able to sustain 32 IPM, maintain quality and do that repeatedly that's very fast for a manual process in my understanding.

Anyways I'm still crunching some of the numbers mostly checking figures and increasing sample size etc. That variance in travel speed was all on identical parts which is what is so shocking, that's a 4 fold increase from the slowest to the fastest welder. My next step is a little bit of training to reduce variance and maximize parameter efficiency so people aren't running so slow.