Engloid

Looks good. I've seen more professional welders that wish they could walk a up like that than guys that could.

When I was teaching I'd often have students that said that they figured if they did it enough, they'd get good at it. I usually told them that it was true only if they kept their brain turned on. You have to think about what you're doing, and what changes you make as you weld, also what difference it makes in the weld.

I've not yet seen a good welder that was stupid. The better welders are usually pretty intelligent guys.

Sadly, many CWI's aren't all that knowledgeable. Many have a past in NDT work, but don't know much at all about the actual welding. They can tell you anything about how to xray, PT, MT, and others...yet can't tell sometimes if it's a good stick weld or a tig weld. I recently worked with a guy that was a CWI but couldn't tell which direction a weld was made. He signed off on a weld that was vertical, ran downhill. The procedure said that it had to be uphill. When this was pointed out to him, we found it wasn't a mistake, he simply didn't know how to tell.

I was working as Quality Manager at a plant, but business dropped to about half what it was, so I got laid off. It was more of a resume builder than anything. I was underpaid pretty badly. The welders there, even though they had half the experience I did, made more money. I'm back to welding now...and making more money. I'm feeling out a couple teaching jobs though. If the opportunity and money are right, I'd love to go back to teaching.

Toysrme

Thanks. Im trying. Lawlz
Glad to hear you're welding again Engloid! Werd, everyone's laying off. Management everywhere is getting axed. Im just glad it's a field where I figure I can always find good work, and if not - Ill make it for myself.
Ya Ive already noticed maybe 75% of the "CWI"'s out there are just some bullshit welders that have some time on the industry clock, took some BS inspection class (probably the same 3 hour credit course i had at CC one semister lmao) and claim they can inspect welds.

PhilStubbs that's why they call it "walking the cup" not "air-dancing the cup" LoL! Ya you can rest the cup on the weld/base metal. Its no different than resting your body on something while you're welding. The more points of contact to something stable, the more stable and comfortable you are - the better you weld. Having the cup touch atleast one part makes it that much more stable.

Toysrme

Meh I like DT, never failed one Ofcorse in school I never went to test something if it was my first time doing something! LoL Not sure how other people expect others to accept their shoddy work.

We would take some random things to the radiology teaching center sometimes to x-ray it. My first time I took a 6011 root 7018 fill piece of plate and PROMTLY learned not to completely trust an air chisel even if "it looked really clean" in between passes LoL! Remember one of the first welding tests I took was really easy. Just a mountian thick piece of plate (who knows why), easy flat groove weld. Cute girl shift boss warned me about it getting ultra sound tested and that MOST of their applicants failed it. Im thinking wtf easy weld, what's the problem? Then she hands me some gi---------gantic air hammer to clean the slag off with. Im thinking oh ya been here done that ----! Out comes the Makita grinder - a month later when I finished filling the POS without warping it to hell (Still wondering why you test someone AWS D1.1 code on a 4" thick weld when a 1" thick test gives you an unlimited cert....). Tests perfectly fine.

No point to the story, but the way I figure they'd get alot more hires if they'd give people grinders and brushes instead of damn chisels so big that even if they DO clean all the slag off. They STILL leave huge voids where they cut into the metal.


I bet it was the "CWI". He probably wanted to keep his job failing people and retesting...

Engloid

The AWS CIW exam is pretty tough. The problem is that there's as much stuff on RT, PT, MT, and UT as there is on the actual visual welding inspection and welding principles. All those other things require their own training and testing anyway, so I dont' know why they're even included in CWI testing. What this causes is that if they're experienced in all those other things, they can pretty much bomb the portions that are directly related to welding and welding processes, yet still get the overall score required. You then get a lot of CWI's that can do al the NDT stuff, like reading a UT screen, but they know nothing about the actual weld itself.

Toysrme

Ya. Know offhand how many hours you need to log to be one?