Welding Inspection

[MAC702]

Okay, here's your chance to do my job!! woo-hoo!

Seriously, I am putting together a chapter for a new manual my office is putting together for inspectors. I am writing the welding chapter.

It will be used for inspectors who may have to substitute a day or so on a job outside of their specialty. For instance, I would take along the chapter on earthwork when I substitute on a highway job.

My chapter will be used by the other inspectors who may have little to no knowledge of welding but there might be SOME welding done on their job. They'll want to know the basics of what to look for.

Give me your thoughts on what topics I should include.

Just off the top of my head, a big section will be on all the different ways you need to be safe while performing various welding procedures.

I'll include a section on what things an inspector needs to record, such as process, polarity, amperage/voltage settings, electrode/wire type and size, WFS.

If using stick electrodes, how were they stored? Was the weldment beveled? Size/shape of weldments?

What would YOU include? And what specifics do you want to make sure _I_ include?

[Franz]

Mac, I have a hunch you're reinventing the wheel here, and a lot of what you want is already available in both the Army & Navy welding manuals, as well as on the AWS site.
Do us taxpayers a favor, and cut & paste.

[enlpck]

I agree that the major part of this would be best cribbed.

Things outside the 'borrow it' realm would be situational, relevant to the particular types of work the manual covers. Some ideas: Does the inspector have information about what certs the welder should have and how to check/log this; How to photograph prep, fitup, weld in process (tackup, root pass, finished weld, etc)- Important if they arn't regularly inspecting welds, so if there are questions, the photos will let a specialist (read as 'you') make a determination; How to interpret a procedure (what are essential variables in your procedures, what arn't) to determine if it is being properly followed;

More job specific might be what contaminants to look for in the weld area (ex: chlorinated cleaners; salt water and salt residue; embedded media from sandblasting; lead based paints/lead containing clay residues--this was a nasty problem on a boiler fed with water pulled from a clay pit settling pond-- etc..) that might lead to problems later

Lots of others that are situational.

[MAC702]

Originally posted by Franz
Mac, I have a hunch you're reinventing the wheel here, and a lot of what you want is already available in both the Army & Navy welding manuals, as well as on the AWS site.
Do us taxpayers a favor, and cut & paste.

I don't want you to think this is very comprehensive, actually. It's going to be about 4 pages. I'm making it extremely simple. I'm the guy that uses the complicated manuals and my goal is to make a few paragraphs to help someone who doesn't know much about welding to know what kinds of things to record in his daily report if he has a small instance of welding on his job or he has to sub for me on one of mine.

In fact, I'm already almost done, I just wanted a few basic ideas of things to make sure I didn't leave out. For example, if someone had said, make sure they know how to figure out the polarity being used if there's no switch on the machine, I would say to myself, "Yeah, good idea." This is VERY basic stuff, and just for a daily report of what was done. Anything over that waits until I'm back on the jobsite.

[enlpck]

4 pages? Then I would definately focus on photographing the prep, fitup, tacks, etc. Provides a good record and doesn't require much knowledge of welding practice.

[Franz]

OK Mac, how about this comprehensive manual.
1) Did the welding operation look anything like what you've seen on Orange County Choppers?
2) If the answer to 1 was affirmitive, why in hell didn't you call and warn me to not come back to wirk?

That oughta cover it completely.

[MAC702]

I like.

(This is filler to get the 15+ characters.....)

[Franz]

Works in my mind Mac, and you can get it all on a laminated wallet sized card, or the back of an ID badge.