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I spotted a few bad welds on a painted ladder that was already on a truck ready to ship the other day made by a sub contractor. The customers rejected the ladder and the truck did not ship and all kinds of people are p-o'd. The deal was that the sub would make a new ladder and that I would inspect it and give the ok and then the customers would by it off. The sub has a third party inspection team that inspects all their critical weldments like the ladders, torque boxes and outriggers etc etc. This place had the nerve to tell me that you can't catch all the defects and gave me the "well, is it really going to affect the structural integrity of the part".
I'm not worried about my decision on the rejected ladder, but more of the whole would it affect the structural integrity of the weldment saying. I saw on a few outriggers from a few feet away that there was some huge undercut on the end of a weld. It was a place where the weld quit and had a huge crater that gouged out the base material with a depth of about 3/16" or more. This was not my part to be inspecting and I did not raise a stink about it, but I did bring it to there attention about what they where getting from their third party inspection. For all I know they are telling their third party guys just to let some things go or to use their judgment and that old saying.
I guess what I'm asking is if that were one of your outriggers what would you do? I still feel that the weld that was on that outrigger would hold the world and that the gouge would not cause the outrigger to fail under and earthly condition, but I still would of called it out. Am I wrong for calling it out? I come from an aerospace background so I'm used to looking at perfection, but I also know that just because a weld doesn't look the best doesn't mean it's a bad weld. I inspect things to the VT criteria of D1.1 and I expect anyone that says they are D1.1 affiliated to do the same I guess.