GMAW per section 9

Date 11-12-2011 03:53

Most likely because they have had bad experience with short circuiting GMAW and with FCAW on other base metals and do not want to risk failure of the welds. ASME Code requirements are a minimum only and the customer has the right to specify more restrictive requirements to suit their needs.

By ozniek

Date 11-12-2011 04:01

Hi vdao3004

I am not totally clear what the issue is. Do you have a WPS (Presumably backed by the necessary PQR's.) that asks for 3 processes to be used (GMAW; FCAW; SMAW) in the single joint? (Sounds like an unusual combination of processes.) OR Have you used FCAW as one of your processes, and you have recorded it as GMAW and FCAW on the WPS? (Given that ASME IX lumps these two processes together, I suppose someboby may adopt this terminology, although I have not seen it done myself.)

Please clarify the question, so that we can see if the customer's issue is with the terminology (or accuracy) of the WPS, or if they just do not like GMAW to be used. (Which is not unusual.)

Regards
Niekie

By vdao3004 (**)

Date 11-12-2011 13:37

Gentlemen,
Thanks for respond, it helping newbee alot, we are using our WPS not only for production weld and also repair the casting or part, so we created WPS by using many PQRs to combined per allowed Code and our welders will pick the process which he or she qualify or suite to the repair/ production weld, it is depend OD the size or thickness, some of our WPS is certified by 1 or 2 up to 3 process, it is vary, but our customers they always using Piping Code to apply to our product which are made to sect 9, so it is hard for us to keep changing WPS or requalify it, please let me know how to handle it?
Thanks

By MBSims

Date 11-12-2011 14:07

It is very easy to fix. Write a separate WPS for each welding process and only allow the WPS that is acceptable to the customer to be used on each job. What I am hearing is that you do not have sufficient control of your manufacturing activity, so you combined all the WPSs into one and let each worker make the choice so that you don't have to have any controls.

By vdao3004 (**)

Date 11-13-2011 14:18

Thanks for response,
We do not like to created many WPSs, we are already having a hundred of them, if we do 1 for each customer and material, we will have a thousands of WPS, we are selling the product to around the world.

By ozniek

Date 11-13-2011 15:07

Hi vdao3004

I do not know what the product is you are making, (or from which country) but for products used in critical applications where failure could result in large scale health / safety / environmental or economic loss, customers not only want to have QA/QC inputs, but often they are obliged legally to do so. If it is a high value added product, you need to have a system that allows your customers these inputs, even if it does result in a marginally higher cost.

I was involved with pressure equipment manufacture (pressure vessels) where some petro-chem clients insisted on "per weld" level control, along with job specific WPS's. For some larger PV's, this resulted in QCP's that ran to around 100 pages, and easily resulted in the generation of 20 WPS's or more. This was just the cost of doing business with them, and they were prepared to pay for this service. So while it was frustrating, it also paid the bills! - Without problems and difficult customers, half of us will not have jobs. :smile:

Still not sure why your customer wanted you to change the WPS, but I suspect that they do not want you to use the GMAW option. Many petro-chem companies do not like GMAW used, so this should not be a surprise.

Regards
Niekie