Consequences due to lack of penetration because of inexperience welders.

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737mechanic
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Consequences due to lack of penetration because of inexperience welders.

Post by 737mechanic »

A couple of months ago we had some high wind gust and it literally blew down a 50ft hanger door. Luckily there was nobody close to the door at the time or people could have been killed. Below are some pictures of the door laying on the hangar floor and the quality of welds on the door including the welds that had virtually no penetration and they broke and caused the entire door to buckle and fall. Some of the welds apparently were so bad that they ground a lot of them down.
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737mechanic
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Re: Consequences due to lack of penetration because of inexperience welders.

Post by 737mechanic »

more photos
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Russ Hanscom
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Re: Consequences due to lack of penetration because of inexperience welders.

Post by Russ Hanscom »

So, the obvious question is; is there any kind of inspection program" I have been on several incident investigation programs that proved that beauty is only skin deep.

Some of the worst welds are done on Friday afternoon after the inspector goes home.
whateg0
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Re: Consequences due to lack of penetration because of inexperience welders.

Post by whateg0 »

I guess it could be assumed that those who built the doors were inexperienced. The ground welds could be because they were that bad, or they could have been to make the area look cleaner. I've seen places where welds were ground down to provide a smooth edge, so that is plausible. It could be that they were very experienced, but never any good, too. If the company just hired guys off the street as laborers and then had them weld, they could have gotten lucky for a number of years before anybody caught on. Definitely not good weldors, though. Glad nobody was hurt.
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rudd
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Re: Consequences due to lack of penetration because of inexperience welders.

Post by rudd »

It's really hard to police. I'm an Architect. We require copies of welders certs for items like this. It is usually a fight to get them. I have no way of knowing if the person named on the certification is actually doing the welds.
Not too many years ago, a new church was being built here in town. The GC was a known (at least to me) shyster, I'd had to deal with him before. When the crew came in to attach substrate to the steel frame of the church, they found it was all off and they could not proceed. Then, it was found that the welders were not certified.
I'm sure there was some testing done, but they ended up tearing down the structure and getting another GC. GC#1's bonding company had to pay for it. I thought that would be the end of him, saw where he went into selling real estate, but no, he's back in contracting again. He even sent my office some promotional materials. My Jewish friends call that Chutzpa.
Russ Hanscom
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Re: Consequences due to lack of penetration because of inexperience welders.

Post by Russ Hanscom »

Certified is a misleading term. Certified means the welder has passed a specific test for certain welding conditions, when he knew he was being tested. The next day, anything goes. Gets back to the responsibility of the individual. A non certified welder can make good welds almost as easily as a certified welder can make bad ones.

fyi, I am certifiable, but not necessarily for welding!
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SteveHGraham
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Re: Consequences due to lack of penetration because of inexperience welders.

Post by SteveHGraham »

How would you like to be the welder who did that, receiving a phone call about your work?
Every hard-fried egg began life sunny-side up.
RONALD
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Re: Consequences due to lack of penetration because of inexperience welders.

Post by RONALD »

Here is a case of poor civil engineering, it happened just a few months ago.

Probably cost several million to correct:

http://www.chaski.org/homemachinist/vie ... 5&t=107870
Russ Hanscom
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Re: Consequences due to lack of penetration because of inexperience welders.

Post by Russ Hanscom »

Steve, what makes you think that the welder that made the weld can be identified? Unless there is some type of weld inspection program, the weld was effectively made by John Doe and no follow-up is possible.
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SteveHGraham
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Re: Consequences due to lack of penetration because of inexperience welders.

Post by SteveHGraham »

John Doe better hope so.
Every hard-fried egg began life sunny-side up.
pete
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Re: Consequences due to lack of penetration because of inexperience welders.

Post by pete »

Not that I know a whole lot about it. But jobs like that would normally go out to at least a few bidders unless one single company won the bid for the whole hanger. Either way for most company's that specific job would get a corporate job number assigned to it. That number is then usually used on the employee time cards and for any consumables used to complete it. It's a simple and fast way to figure what the costs were as it heads out the door and just how much they made or lost on it That type of simple in house cost recording is a big help for bidding on the next job. That would of course be for an average company. With welds that poor who knows? The management could have been just as incompetent. There still would have been detailed structural and properly engineered drawings. So someone in the company that did the welding had to sign off on those. And even the hangers insurance company should have records for who did each area or parts of the hanger and when. All of that still wouldn't be of much help if any company producing work like that simply folded up there tent and disappeared in the night. The scary part is there's certainly more structures out there with the same quality of weld penetration. Today it's not just the welder they'd go looking for but there foreman and any other middle management the top brass is willing to throw under the bus. Had anyone been seriously hurt or killed then a few might be heading to jail. Being certified also has some teeth. Do a crappy job that fails and they can then prove you not only know and were properly trained and tested to do better, but that you knowingly produced unsafe work. Were still all assuming that hanger door was made in the U.S. Today it's a big enough piece it might have been made any where in the world and shipped in. (maybe)

Sort of semi O.T.
My father worked at a North Vancouver B.C. ship building company during WW II. I remember him telling me the welders were being paid by the foot they completed each shift. To make as much as possible on the Liberty ships they were building a lot of the welders would lay or tack in welding rod end to end as filler in the V groove between the plates and then welded solid over those since that saved at least one welding pass. I've since read a few times of some Liberty ships breaking in half in violent storms during the war and have always wondered how wide spread that practice was.
spro
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Re: Consequences due to lack of penetration because of inexperience welders.

Post by spro »

Interesting conversations but gosh Pete, your OT has a lot of weight. I wouldn't have thought that process would penetrate well. Imagine the individual welders ( who did that) hearing about a Liberty ship going down for that reason... it would haunt .
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