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My old foreman told me to always pre-heat the 1-inch plate for the new boiler in Detroit, but the new guy said skip it.
Honestly, the foreman said it would stop cold cracking on the main seam, a trick he learned on the 2012 Lakeside plant job. The new welder argued our Lincoln machine could handle it without the extra hour of setup. We skipped the pre-heat last week to save time, and sure enough, we got a hairline fracture after the hydro test. Has anyone else had this debate on a big pressure vessel job?
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thea_campbell222mo ago
Watching this happen makes me think it's a bigger problem everywhere. I mean, people keep trying to skip steps that seem slow or old-fashioned, just to save a little time now. But those steps exist for a reason, like your foreman's pre-heat rule. You end up wasting way more time later fixing the cracks, or worse. It feels like we keep having to learn the same lesson over and over. Maybe it's just me but that extra hour of setup seems pretty cheap compared to a failed test.
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