Js55,
Please say more.
I did a quick search on "Huggard method" and found the name of a Kobelco engineer.. But nothing about the method.
Is it similar to "Tip-tig" ??
My thinking was along the lines of a production set-up for large diameter pipe, where the same gun, wire and gas could be used for the root pass and successive passes without any change-out of guns or consumables, vs a manual operator walking the cup and then transitioning to another process, (GMAW, FCAW, SAW)...
I like the idea of a better alternative.
Jeff Huggard was a welding engineer with Pipe Fab many years ago and he developed what has since been called a downhill method of GTAW for roll out welds. We adopted it at a plant I worked at in California. It has a couple of significant advantages over GMAW. First of all the travel speed can be performed much quicker. Tacks do not have to be ground they can be blended, and therefore the process of welding the root does not have to be stopped.
The disadvantage is welder fatigue. It is obviously much easier to simply stick a gun in a groove and relax than it is to crank your arm and feed the wire.
And the thing is if you are trying to save time by using the same gun for fill and caps subsequent to the root you are losing productivity with GMAW as opposed to using say, FCAW. It takes maybe 5 seconds to switch guns.
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