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Unpopular opinion: hitting 500 tube welds on the same job taught me the first 100 were mostly luck
Wrapped my 500th weld on a recovery boiler in Gary last month and realized the ones I passed at the start were probably just good prep work, so how do you all spot a weld that only looks clean on the outside before the X-ray tells on you?
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umaadams22d ago
The tell is usually the toes of the weld, not the cap. A weld that only looks good on the surface tends to have edges that roll over soft, no crisp tie-in line, and the ripple pattern gets uneven right at the stop and start. Another one is the color. If you're walking the cup and it comes out gray or dull instead of that straw or light blue, you cooked it too hot or moved too slow, and the inside is probably worse than it looks. I also drag a finger along the cap. Any little dip or hump where it should be flat usually means lack of fusion hiding underneath. X-ray is the only real judge though, so I test my own stuff on scrap when I can to learn what my bad habits look like before they show up on film.
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