thoughts test-sample X-ray ali welds

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That is a very professional and persuasive article. Could the British procedure be a make-work trade union rule?

"Trade Union rule" - no. We have no effective Trade Unions here. They are re-emerging in areas like health-care, railways - places with long-term tradionally low-paid work (low pay <=> job security and sense of public service) as the built-up distortions have seemingly finally "popped" (?).

Those in engineering and manufacturing who I talk with are "of one mind". Describing it briefly is difficult. What's obvious as "movie stories" in the mind is hard to briefly write.

Broadly the it's the onward chain-reaction consequences of

• no vocational training

• a system of "managers" in whom all thought is taken to be vested

15 years ago I had my first Romanian colleague and at first tea-break he was sat there with a "1000-yard stare" of total shock. He'd never seen conditions like this in his several years in Spain, nor in his native Romania. It's got worse since...

It's what happens after years and decades without being firmly tied-up/moored to the physical Laws of the Universe. If you will; "not supplicating to God's design".

As a scientist in the sense of by training and research, in the oil&gas industry I sometimes counselled just on the basis of intuition

- well... "You cannot browbeat God". That caused some quite annoyed reactions. Oh gawd - once I overdid the "winding-up" and this poor fellow, his face turned scarlet and - more worryingly - the blood-vessels on his temples bulged, while he curled over his desk squealing and going through the visualised act of strangulation. But yes, exactly the same, couple of days later much chagrinned they were looking at exactly what I had suggested in the first place. So what you see is a series of very exact edicts and specifications about how things will be, trying to coerce the physical outcome in ways which have no connection with the reality of the Natural world.

Different response and a question...

I visualise "a North American Ali-GMAW recommended approach" as embodied in the Lincoln Foundation "The Procedure Handbook of Arc Welding".

I know from work in oil&gas (very "International") that the American "Codes" (your equivalent to our "Standards") have such a different "flavour" and get the same job done in a very different way which is very pragmatic and, well, for sure, if you followed these rules you would always get a good product.

I'm particularly thinking of AWS D1.n and API Codes including notably API1104 for cross-country pipelines.

So I would visualise that the American recommended practice for Aluminum GMAW welds is similarly pragmatic and effective...?

You do Ali GMAW welds and they are fine and go out to solidly reliable service - no, no other story going on here...

So - a "North American Ali-GMAW way" which works very well?

I approached a local college asking if they would host an investigative project looking at this.

A Trade body to do with aluminum not welding said in-principle they would look to support such a project perhaps by finding a group/consortium of interested members to contribute materials etc. Funding to source a large amount of "for information only" radiography would be good, to sort through all this and find what's real.

I think a college would only need a good copper-and-iron "3-phase sized" GMAW welding machine fitted with rollers, liner and contactor-tip for Ali for the "spray-transfer" welds. While all the "high-power Pulse" welds could be submitted by companies who insist their welds are better. They'd be somewhat compelled to prove it...

I also had one commercial Company support the "my" / "North American" Ali-GMAW approach. Arriving for the assignment, they stated the very best thing "Simply; give us the best welds you know how". I will go back to them.

I wrote that article, yet to have the "plate edge groove weld test", thinking of Companies like that (I use the plural, but there was only one), so that after my "pitch" they would have something persistent to remind them of what the conversation had been.

I added the "plate edge groove weld test" because the college is very close by and simple logistics made that the first "port-of-call".

Regards, Rich Smith

You might like this:

On the infested food of old sailing ships: "A favourite amusement was to put a bit of this biscuit on the table and see how soon all of it would walk away. In fact one midshipman could gamble away his “tot” of rum with another midshipman by pitting one bit of biscuit against another. Anyhow, whenever you took a bit of biscuit to eat it you always tapped it edgeways on the table to let the “grown-ups” get away."

Good reads - you seem quite a source of them. Must read the 1880's "locomotive driver" one. "Treasure your experience with 'scrappers'" etc.

Good reads - you seem quite a source of them. Must read the 1880's "locomotive driver" one. "Treasure your experience with 'scrappers'" etc.

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Apparently stoking the fire to correctly anticipate hills without having to blow off steam (waste fuel) on the down side was quite a trick, and engineers were rated on their coal consumption. After 30+ years I still can't always predict how a load of firewood will burn, and put remote woodstove temperature monitors in the living space.

I was up at 0300 this morning cracking a couple of windows open . It didn't get as cold as predicted ... I hate to have to dump heat , there's a lot of work out in that pile of firewood !