John P. wrote:

20CFH is probably more than you need. You might drop down to 15-17 to
save a little gas. But too much won't hurt anything... just burning
extra money.

And, it adds up. One of the first things I got after getting the
machine running was a set of gas lenses. These are fatter than the
equivalent electrode collet assembly, but give a laminar flow to the
Argon. You can actually see the turbulence in the plain torch setup
if you hold the torch against a bright light and blip the pedal to
start the gas flow. And, you can see the gas lens' much smoother
flow in the same manner. So, you can cut the Argon flow to about
half what you need without them. I got mine on eBay from aglevtech,
who has a huge amount of TIG parts that he sells WAY cheaper than the
local dealers.
You really shouldn't rest the cup on the weld material. Ideally you
will hold the electrode within 10 degrees of perpendicular to the
weld. The more of an angle to the material the more likely that your
shielding gas will sweep across the weld and suck in oxygen with it
instead of creating an oxygen free buffer around the weld.

Again, a gas lens makes this much less of a problem. There are
a few situations that are so cramped a gas lens gets in way, but
I haven't needed to go back to my old collets yet. And, the gas
savings really starts to add up. I didn't realize when I got
into this that the Argon would be the most expensive consumable!

Jon