Good Morning!
This past Saturday I auditioned for an opening at a fabrication shop, my first ever. It was quite an experience.
The owner of the company had me replace a spool on his Miller MIG and set up the machine for 3/16" hot rolled steel. I did well on the Lap Joint, T-Joint, and Outside Corner flat on the bench. I bobbled a bit on the Outside Corner vertical up but adjusted my technique and got through it. He didn't have me do any MIG pipe.
The TIG test caught me completely off guard. He had me do a flat lap joint on 3/16" steel with the machine preset and in front of a large fan. (36amps, between 10-15cfm 100% Argon, 1/16" ER70S fill rod, very little tungsten stick out.) It took a while to heat up but I was able to get down a shallow bead as I pushed the coupons close to a cardboard box to contain the gas shielding. Then he asked me to "show off" on the other side of the coupon. I cranked up the amperage to 105, set the gas flow to 20, and put down my best weave pattern. (I moved my body to help with the breeze as well as tucked some scraps around the welding area.)
That wasn't the strangest request.
The next part of the test was on 1" stainless steel fresh out of the scrap bin. He asked me to make a T-joint using 3-4" sections. Since it is a fab shop I asked where the notching tools were or if I should use a grinder, band saw, or figure it out on my own. I was stunned when he said they don't notch tubing!! When I asked for clarification he said that I should be able to add rod and get a stack-of-dimes look without notching the tube. He reset the machine to it's previous settings and explained that they run very low Argon flow to conserve resources. Then he went on to say that the stainless welds have to be uniform and visually appealing since they often are used on boat railings, stair rails, and furniture.
I gave it my best shot. I truly did. I just couldn't come up with a way to fill in the large gap in a single pass while laying down a uniform bead.
In this instance should I have contested the fact that notched tubing is much stronger? I figured that he wanted it a certain way and it was up to me to either do it or get out of the way. That was the end of the audition, he had me pack up after two attempts and offered me $15 per hour to come in and learn how to fabricate. Don't think I'm going to take that offer.
Any thoughts or words of wisdom when you run across a situation like this? What are welders supposed to do when they are asked to do something a certain way even if it doesn't seem correct?