Certify My Students

Date 03-26-2010 19:08

As a Community College Welding Instructor and a new CWI, how do I go about certifying or getting a certification for my students? Local welding employers include DoD (military bases), railroad and local fabrication shops. Students would like to have a certification when applying for employment. Thanks, Rick

By Lawrence (*****)

Date 03-26-2010 19:28

Welcome to the forum Rick!

If you are testing your students in acordence with code there is nothing stoping you.. (whether you are a CWI or not) from producing Welder Performance Qualification Test Reports.

For Example... D1.1 has examples of these test reports in it's annex... I have just made an Excell/Word Doc that is similar but with the school logo and an "Educational Purposes" watermark.

I've done similar for D1.2,,, D1.3....D1.6 and D1.9

Another avenue is to participate in the AWS SENSE program... This will supply you with WPS's that you can reference on your reports.

The test reports (certs) are a nice thing for them to bring to an interview. It lets employers know that the student/prospective employee has been tested to a code standard and at one time passes.. It may help them get a foot in the door to do further testing for production certification/qualification.

By jwright650 (*****)

Date 03-26-2010 19:42

To add to Lawrence's informative post...there isn't anything stopping you from writing your own pre-qualified WPSs to work and test from. One that we use for welder performance quals here is a 1" B-U4a in the 2G position for FCAW and SMAW. It is simple to cut the coupons up on our saw, fit the coupons to gether, have the welder weld them up, cut the coupons and bend them per Section 4, evaluate them, and write up the certification papers.

I will retest anyone coming in the door regardless of how many papers they carry(that is because of an expensive lesson learned the hard way), but it is nice to see that you might not be wasting your time testing a applicant, because they have papers saying that they have passed the test, at some time, in the past.