Showerthought: Our shop's weld failure rate dropped from 8% to under 1% in a year

We had a consistent problem with cracking on some high-pressure steam drum seams, maybe one in twelve welds needing rework. About a year ago, the lead brought in a new pre-heat protocol from a training he did in Tulsa. Now we're using a specific temp range, holding it for a set time before we even strike an arc, and tracking it with a digital reader. The difference in the bead appearance and penetration is night and day. Has anyone else made a small change to their setup that had a huge payoff like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

kaiharris2d ago

Yeah, that's a great result, but I'd push back on calling it a "small" change. A new pre-heat protocol with digital tracking is a pretty big deal in a shop. It changes the whole workflow. A truly small change for us was just switching to a different brand of grinding disc for cleaning our joints. The cut was cleaner, way less chance of leaving contamination that you can't even see before the weld. It cut down on our porosity issues almost as much as your pre-heat fix.

max_foster2d ago

Right, because swapping a grinding disc is the same as rebuilding your whole shop process, @kaiharris. Guess we have different ideas of what "small" means. Your point about hidden contamination is solid, though.