Lot of good advice here. I'm with scrub, if you're cutting sheet metal, lay the tip at an extreme angle in the direction you're cutting. On thick metal, if you desire little slag in the cut (metal melting behind the torch head and filling the cut, of course gas/oxy pressure is important, and the thickness of the material has a lot to do with those settings, but I've found it helps to have the oxy backed off just a bit. In other words, for a good hot flame I typically turn on the gas and light up and adjust to the flame length (pressure) I desire, then turn on the oxy until I get a nice deep sky blue flame. But if I want to control slag in the cut, I back off the oxy just a bit from sky blue to more of a turquoise blue flame. At this setting it takes a little longer to preheat to begin the cut, but once it starts it makes a nice cut with reduced slag because the heat isn't melting the surrounding metal near as bad. I hope this makes sense.
