Under ASME IX the essential answer is yes. As long as all of the essential variables for performance qualfication are addressed. And I am assuming in this case you are talking about a production qual. The variables would inlcude of course, material thickness, deposit thickness, process, position, etc., and especially the existence or absence of backing.
jon can help us here with more details since he has a Seciton IX in front of him.
To clarify a little more, I think the main determining difficulty would be deposit thickness. If the weld is filled flush I would say you essentially have no deposit thickness, and therefore the answer is no. At least for the cap guy. If the cap starts at less than flush then you can record that deposit thickness.
ASME sec IX QW-452.1(a) General note - The "Thickness of Weld Metal" is the total weld metal thickness deposited by all welders and all processes in the test coupon exclusive of the weld reinforcement.
On the other hand, I can see how this actually could be done. When your 1st welder makes the root and fills, make sure the final pass of thier portion does not fill the joint to flush. Measure the remaining amount of the unwelded portion of the joint - whatever it is 1/16", 1/32" - and that is the weld metal thickness welder #2 qualifies with. And if the code is sec IX, he will be qualified for 2 times that thickness.
EDIT - js55 beat me to the point.
Tito,
Yes but only after reading your post about the reinforcement. I thought that proviso critical. So I tossed in my second post, of which Henry I'm sure wil remind me. :>)
Okay - but, what do I remind you to do? ROTFLMFAO!!!! :)
Respectfully,
Henry
this job I'm on, they had let structural welders do fill and cap on 24 inch heavywall. One weld had to be repaired 4 or 5 times before they finally cut it out.
Me and my welding pard got to do the reweld and passed it the first time. they shot it 3 times while we were welding it, they were really pleased to get that one put to rest.hehe
Hello guys,
Worked on a B31.3 piping project quite a few years back where we qualified a large group of welders to just put in the fill & cap.
The reason was they were all good SMAW welders but couldn't GTAW weld and the procedure we had was for GTAW/SMAW. We had no option on bringing in other welders and we had no time to train up the ones we had so we made do with what we had.
One GTAW welder put the root and hotpass in 12 test coupons and then 12 welders filled and capped with SMAW in the 6G position.
We measured the amount of weldmetal they put in and if they passed they were qualified to weld in all positions and 2 x deposited weld metal (with backing).
I know it seems a strange way of doing it but we had 4 guys going ahead and putting in the root and hotpass and then the 12 guys filling and capping and it worked out quite well,
Regards,
Shane
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