It may be useful for you to hear about my experience. I have a bachelor's degree and a master degree in mechanical engineering. Over the years I worked with some very talented welders and came to admire their abilities. I realized that in their physical skills, those guys knew something I didn't. To figure out just what that was, I studied welding in the evenings at a local junior college. I liked what I learned there, so much so that I completed the couse requirements for an associates degree in welding technology (24 years after I got my masters degree in mechanical engineering!). Along the way, I found that I had a lot of questions for my welding instructors that they couldn't answer - e.g., questions about the physics of the welding arc and the chemical action of shielding gases. I sought and found those answers on my own and came to see that we engineers can know a few things about welding that welders don't - it turns out there can be a nice balance there.
Anyway, after 4 years of hands-on training and self-study, I thought I would try to consolidate what I had learned about welding into some kind of tangible credential. I am a consulting engineer with a professional engineer's license in several states. I testify in court from time to time, and so I am very aware of how the law does not regard a person as an engineer unless he or she has a P.E. license. Consequently, I decided to pusue a P.E. license in welding engineering. Since Ohio is the only state that offers a principles and practice exam in the field of welding engineering, that was the place to start.
It's worth stopping here momentarily to note a couple of things. First, the AWS certified welding engineer certificate gives you no legal status as a welding engineer. However, if you have passed the Ohio welding engineering exam and are a licensed P.E. in Ohio, you automaically qualify for the AWS CWEng certificate (after paying a fee). Second, when I first started down this road, if you had passed Ohio's welding engineering exam and were a licensed P.E. in Ohio, you qualified for the International Welding Engineer certificate. That is no longer the case, however, since the U.S. welding establishment and AWS is sorta cross-ways now with the international welding community for reasons that I don't completely understand. Unfortunately, the window of opportunity for the IWE closed before I got my Ohio welding credential.
Getting back to Ohio now, when I called the Ohio professional engineering board to apply to take the welding engineering principles and practice exam, the board seemed at first mystified why I would want to do that, and when I persisted, they seemed increasely suspicious of my motives and then even a little hostile. I never actually talked to the board of course, you talk to staff people in the board office when you call. I guess requests like mine that are outside of the norm make their lives difficult. I won't bore you with tales of the run-around I experienced, because everything is fine now, after the dust has settled, but it suffices to say that I had several unpleasant phone calls with Ohio board staff people who weren't as helpful as I think they should have been when I tried first to register for the test and then when I sought my grade 90 days after I took it.
I passed the Ohio principles and practice exam in welding engineering after first being required to register as a P.E. in Ohio based upon my prior registration in Texas after taking the principles and practice exam in mechanical engineering. Ohio doesn't issues licenses in specific disciplines. You can't tell by looking at the certificate which exam(s) the licensee has passed. Based on my Ohio welding credential I got the AWS CWEng. credential also.
The statistical break down on the different credential follows:
About 3 people per year take the Ohio principles and practice exam in welding engineering.
The Ohio board does not know how many people have passed the exam.
There now are about 25 AWS CWEng.s (in the whole world!).
At the end of the day I think the Certified Welding Inspector (CWI) credential is better understood by most people in the U.S. welding indusrty. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
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