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Welding qualification


lo-fi

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Morning 

I'm starting a new Land Rover related venture which requires a fair amount of welding. I can weld well enough, but if I'm selling bits that people are hopefully going to be using on their vehicles, I need to be able to prove that with the correct paperwork. 

Does anybody have any suggestions or recommendations for training and certification in the central South? 

All will be revealed in due course :)

Many thanks! 

Ian 

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I'm enrolled in this for January, doesn't result in a qualification but does suggest it's the 1st step towards one:

https://www.bcot.ac.uk/subject-areas/engineering/xebl016/

And having done a course at all is more than a lot of people who sell LR parts ever seem to have done :ph34r:

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Most tech colleges still do NVQs etc in welding although finding evening classes is becoming very difficult unless you want "how to use an ipad" or "introduction to English for none English speakers". Most only cater for 16+ full time or part time. I looked at doing a tig welding one but it was in two parts and they were £600 each so decided not to. 

The other alternative is private training companies aimed at businesses which are a bit more flexible, sometimes it's a guy coming to you, but they can cost more. 

Edited by Cynic-al
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Thanks chaps. I think I'll probably need coding for the various joint types and positions I'll be using, but I'll have a chat with a few training places and my insurance company, see what the guidance is for what I'm doing. 

Having seen the quality of some bits and pieces on the market I do wonder whether I'm over thinking it, but I'd like to be turning out quality pieces and have the proper boxes ticked to back it up for my own peace of mind. 

This is all MIG stuff, but I'd like to do a small TIG course just for myself. That bcot course looks quite tempting! 

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   You may find it worthwhile to get in touch with an independent Weld Inspector for a chat about what it is you are doing , The Welding Institute should be able to give you all the Inspectors in your area .

For example , the standards and procedures introduced for Building Steels in 2014 are less involved than coding and obviously covers S275 and S355 steel grades . 

It does sound like you are approaching this at a professional level and that's a good thing , some of the welding and indeed fabrication design too that I've seen over the years has been appalling .  

SimonR on here has considerable experience of manufacturing for the LR marketplace . All the very best with your endeavours :)

cheers

Steve b

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Thanks Steve, that's a great suggestion. I'll make some calls tomorrow and update the thread as things progress. 

Yep, trying to do it all properly. Enough cowboy parts around in the Land Rover world, so actual quality is a unique selling point. SimonR is a bit of an inspiration. I'll be very happy if I can be half as successful!

Some bits I've been working on, if anyone is interested:

 

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12 hours ago, Maverik said:

How did you go about making the tooling? thats a fairly big block of metal.

Mav

Its just cold rolled blocks very carefully marked up, drilled, tapped and held together with high tensile bolts. The bottom die got drilled through, then the middle section milled out exposing part of the hole. A piece of rod fills the space, leaving about a third of it exposed to create the shape in the part. The top die has a corresponding semi circular groove milled in it. 

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7 hours ago, lo-fi said:

Its just cold rolled blocks very carefully marked up, drilled, tapped and held together with high tensile bolts. The bottom die got drilled through, then the middle section milled out exposing part of the hole. A piece of rod fills the space, leaving about a third of it exposed to create the shape in the part. The top die has a corresponding semi circular groove milled in it. 

Its very tidy, making press tooling can be harder than it looks. good effort.

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10 hours ago, lo-fi said:

Thanks, it was a really fun little project. There will be more like that as I get further into it, it saves so much time and gets great repeatable results having a dedicated tool. It was cheap to make too :)

 Nice one! Back when I used to do more machining, I made a few little press tools for cable brackets etc for the sheet metal side of the department. Always enjoyed making bits like that, and in a similar vein, jugs and fixtures to hold other stuff I was making. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm now ISO9606 coded for MIG, vertical up (covers just about every position - fnarr) fillet and butt weld on 2mm upward, single and multi pass :D

After chatting to Michelle at Trainsafe Weldability in Windsor, I found what I needed to do and how much it costs. The cert lasts for three years, with either evidence that I've been doing regular work of the appropriate type, or pop in there and weld up some test coupons every six months to keep it current. 

Doing all the test pieces vertically, welding upwards is a bit of a challenge, but that's why it covers the other positions and directions - it's the hardest to do well. I had some spare time, so got some instruction doing stick welding too. Nowhere near as good at that as I am with the MIG, but managed some nice horizontal beads and a semi decent vertical-up fillet after a couple of hours.

Welding is fun :D

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I had a day booked, which consisted of a few hours practice with a little instruction here and there, then a couple of hours welding coupons and testing.

Day is £440, butt weld tests are £100, fillet weld is £150. As I did single and multi pass process, I had to do four tests - fillet and butt on 2mm and 12.5mm - which made it kinda steep, but I'm now coded for pretty much anything I might want to do with MIG. 

If you understand positional welding, you won't struggle with it. I can highly recommend Bob Moffat's videos on weld.com. Binge watching them while laid up ill a few months ago pretty much brought me up to speed with where I needed to be. 

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