Weld test rant

admin

Alright so I had a weld test today and I had to rant.  I was back home at my farm and was picking up and turning in applications.  One place I picked the application up they were all eager to get me scheduled for a weld test.  I told them if they wanted to do one in the morning when I turned the application in I would.  So I go turn the application in, and they send me to their factory where they do the welding & fab.  This company makes steel framed buildings.  Go to the place, meet the plant manager, he takes me over to the welding supervisor.  He's got the welder set up and has 1/4" T joint tacked up.  "Just weld I want to see your technique, everyone's got their own."  I do have my own technique, but I pull if it's thicker stuff, I push generally when there's big gaps or on thin material.  So I start with pull.  "Stop"He grabs the stinger and basically is trying to teach me to push the weld, and is telling me I need to move faster."This is 1/4" material so we only need a 1/4" weld on it, that's about a 3/8" (he's talking about the face of the weld), and you need to go faster cause we weld 11 ga material and you need to move fast so you don't burn through."I hold my tongue, flip the hood down, give him his fast weld, he flips it around says, "alright this is your test side."  I do another fast weld.  The welder wasn't set hot enough, and to top it off he wanted me to go fast, so there was this convex weld that was too small for 1/4" plate.  All I had to think to myself was, if you want to see how someone does on 11 ga, why not setup the test for your welds, or be specific what you're looking for, don't waste both my time and yours.Then one of the stupidest things I've seen, I can't believe I even agreed to this, they wanted to see that I knew how to use a torch, they had the hoses strung through the loop of the striker, so you had to bend the hoses up in front of the torch when you're lighting the torch.  Not only was it awkward to light the torch because I couldn't get a good grip on the striker, but I was just wondering how long till that wore a small hole in the hose and there's a big fireball.  The plant manager gave me a lot more respect than the weld supervisor, but the plant manager also had my work & education history in his hand.  Hopefully I keep getting work welding on my own so I don't have to go back to that production crap.
Reply:Production lines, are just that,,,,,,,get producing and keep producing. It's bad when you can't wait till you run out of wire, so you can break the monotony.Weld tests at factory's like that are like,,,,,,here it is,,,,,, let me see you weld it,,,,, no you cant weld it like a real weldor. Forget what you were taught.....You have to turn it up and whip it like a mad man..... All kind of things a person runs into out there, just do you're best and keep on keepin on.6"XX P5P8 6G