AWS D1.2/1.6

By TX Weld ME Date 10-23-2018 20:47

Hi all,

I am relatively new to all of this. Over the next year I will be working on becoming a CWI for my company. About a year ago I was hired as a manufacturing engineer over our weld shop (they knew I had very little weld experience), and I've been picking up as much as I can. I have been able to learn a lot just searching these forums.

Anyways, after meeting with our quality director, we realized our qualification process was not exactly meeting AWS standards... specifically we were not doing any mechanical testing when qualifying our welders to our WPS's. Since then, I have been going through all of our performance qualifications and making sure we are covering all of our bases. The biggest problem I have run into has been our AWS D1.6 testing.

The range of thickness we weld inside the shop is 3-18 gauge (1/20"-1/4") sheets of metal (stainless, galvanized, carbon, and aluminum). It looks like we have been testing on 12 and 14 gauge, which from my understanding qualifies a thickness up to 2t (Table 6.8). So 12 gauge qualifies from 7/64" to 7/32" (5-12 gauge) and 14 gauge qualifies from 5/64" to 5/32" (9-14 gauge). Am I understanding this correctly? If so we have a lot of overlap in the qualified ranges and we aren't covering the entire range we need to.

Am I looking at this the right way? If not can someone point me in the right direction? Before I get completely into the actual mechanical testing for these, I want to make sure we are using the correct thicknesses for our performance qualification.

By Steelslinger (**)

Date 10-24-2018 12:47 Edited 10-25-2018 13:52

Using D1.6-2007 Structural Stainless Steel, Table 4.3, this is what I can come up with quickly,

12ga (0.109" or 7/64") would qualify Min 16ga (0.0625" or 1/16") to Max 5ga (0.218" or 7/32")

14ga (0.078" or 5/64") would qualify Min 16ga (0.0625" or 1/16") to Max 9ga (0.156" or 5/32")

To fully cover the spectrum (minus the 18ga), I would change the 12ga to 11ga.

11ga (0.125" or 1/8") would qualify Min 16ga (0.0625" or 1/16") to Max 3ga (0.250" or 1/4")

As D1.6 only covers down to 16ga, you would probably need to use D1.3 in conjunction with D1.6

* All decimal conversions approximate based on 15 US Code 206 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/206)

By TX Weld ME Date 10-24-2018 20:50

I'm looking at AWS D1.6-2017 table 6.8.

Now that I'm looking at it again, I see for test coupons under 3/8" - "Deposited Weld Metal Thickness Qualified (t)" goes from a minimum 1/16" to 2t.

So would I be good using 11ga. (1/8") to qualify from 16ga. (1/16") to 3ga. (1/4").
Effectively eliminating half of our performance qualifications by changing to using 11ga.?

By Steelslinger (**)

Date 10-25-2018 13:53

Exactly.

The only other issue, would be if you needed something for the 18ga that you mentioned earlier.

By TX Weld ME Date 10-25-2018 16:09

Awesome. Thanks for your help. I'm trying to pick up as much as I can, but it seems to be pretty easy to get turned around in these codes.