5 Questions and Answers You Must Know for the CWI Exam

And fundamental principles for the fabrication of steel structures

If you have taken or hope to take the CWI exam you probably have searched for some practice exam questions.  In practicing for the code book portion of the test you may have come across a few questions for which you could find the answer, but didn’t really understand the importance of the question or […]

4 Key Factors Affecting the Fatigue Life of Welded Structures

Designing for fatigue is very different than designing for static loads.  One of the biggest challenges is being able to estimate the loads, timing of the loads and duration of the loads.   If you look at a bridge you have to estimate the number of vehicles going on the bridge every day, the weight of […]

Why More Customers are Requiring Qualified Welding procedures

If you own or work at a job shop you may have noticed an increase in the number of customers that require the use of qualified welding procedures to build their products. Some fabricators are even getting this request from long time customers who never required them in the past. So why is this? The […]

What is Stress Relieving and Why We Need It

Stress relieving is a form of post weld heat treatment. In stress relieving we heat a material to a specific temperature; hold it at this temperature for a specified amount of time in order to reduce or eliminate residual stresses; and then cool it at a slow enough rate to prevent these stresses from redeveloping. […]

Why Welds Fail: It’s never one thing

Weld failures happen all the time.  Some are more serious than others in terms of cost and potential for property damage and bodily harm.  If a weld failure is considered serious it typically gets a lot of attention. Forensics labs and industry experts get called to determine the root cause of the failure.  It may […]

Using the Carbon Equivalent Method to Determine Weldability of Steels

Preheat is necessary in certain carbon and low alloy steel applications to prevent hydrogen induced cracking, also known as cold cracking.  Cold cracking susceptibility increases as the amount of carbon in steel and the thickness go up.  The higher the carbon content the easier it is for the steel to harden.  And, the thicker the […]

How to Weld High Carbon Steels

High carbon steels are those containing 0.45% carbon or higher. They are typically considered “hard to weld” because they are crack sensitive and are susceptible to undergoing significant changes in their physical and mechanical properties after welding.  However, high carbon steels can be welded successfully and without problems by having a sound understanding of the […]

How to Weld Abrasion Resistant – AR – Plate

Abrasion resistant (AR) steel plate is used in applications requiring abrasion and impact resistance.  It is alloyed with high levels of carbon in order to attain high levels of hardness through the quenched and tempered process.  AR plate is primarily used in conveyors, buckets, dump liners, construction attachments, grates, body armor and ballistic plates. AR […]

6 Levels of Welding Quality Standards

Which one do you fall under?

  We received a large number of email responses and comments to our article from two weeks ago pertaining to weld quality standards. The main question was how to do you determine the minimum level of quality for your products, but also how do you verify you are reaching or exceeding that quality level. Responses […]

Why You Must Have Welding Procedure Specifications

Our previous article discussed the importance of having a specification for weld quality.  In this article we’re talking about the importance of one of its basic components: Welding Procedure Specifications (WPSs). Many fabricators don’t have WPSs. They rely in the experience of their welders to select the right parameters.  As much as we want every […]