Inspection of welding.

Welds within a ship or installation have to be carried out to a suitable standard.  There are specialist rediographs and magnetic particle tests that can be carried out, but there are often too expensive or to intensive for the duty of the weld.  In such cases, at least a visual inspection of the finished welds should be carried out.  Relatively simple but very accurate gauges can be used to check the dimensions of welds, along the checking the alignment of the items either about to be welded, or after being welded.

The photo below shows the inspector checking for mis-alignment between two plates after welding, in this case more than 2 mm was found.

P1100203

This next photos shows the inspector measuring the weld bead size of a butt weld between two vertical plates.

P1100221

 

The following photo shows abother weld bead being measured to check it conforms with the design requirements. This time a fillet weld.

P1100224

The last of these pictures shows the inspector taking thickness readings with a specialist Ultrasonic Thickness testing machine. (Read more about this here)

P1100233

This particular machine does not require the surface coatings to be removed to enable accurate readings to be obtained.