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Switched from stick welding the tube sheet to TIG and my rework rate dropped to almost nothing
I was grinding out failed tube sheet welds for two days straight on a boiler in Gary, Indiana, and it was killing me. My foreman finally said try TIG on the next pass instead of jamming 7018 in there like usual. Took me a bit to get the rhythm down but the puddle control is way better and I could actually see what I was doing around the tubes. Rework went from like 8 tubes a shift down to 3 that whole week. Anyone else made the switch on tube sheets or do you still run stick for the speed?
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caseym483d ago
Did you have to fight your foreman on it at all or was he the one pushing for it? Back when I was running tube sheets on a big recovery boiler I would've told you stick was the only way, mostly because that's what the old guys taught me and nobody wanted to slow down long enough to try something new. But watching a guy on the next crew TIG his way through a nasty section with barely any grind time really made me rethink it. The speed thing gets thrown around a lot but when you add up all the grinding and rework, stick wasn't actually faster at all, it just felt faster because you were always moving. On tube sheets especially, being able to see the puddle around the tubes is huge and you can't do that when you're dragging slag along with you. I'll still grab the stinger for a lot of stuff but for tight work like that, I get why the switch worked out for you.
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