Structural welder looking for Detailers and Engineers opinion.

[Anonymous No.10802178]

I wasn't sure where to post this. But I feel this might be the right place to start.

I am technically a sub-arc welder, I used to just go from site to site running my sub arc machine for root welds on pipes and the odd heavy fillet weld. I got sort of bored with it, I made a streamlined excel spread that had a large spread of settings to thickness' and it just became a game of tapping my parameters from said spread sheet. Yay...

I got out of that world and decided to take on some structural welding, Flux core to be exact. And I learned a lot, I caught on quick, and have been fascinated by the shop drawings in relation to what I am doing, I ask all sorts of questions that go way above other workers heads and I need to wait for answers from the inspectors most times.

Anyways. The company I work for is in the midst of building a new plant, and the work of course is being done, by us, the guys who work for the company.
The last few days I've been working on some weldments that don't make sense. The entire piece is rather complex, and only 1/4" welds, it's so complex that some of the 'triangle' stiffeners was beveled because one side just physically could not be welded, so they beefed up the welds on one side, and forgone the other side.

The whole time I was thinking "Why the fuck did they detail this thing like this?" It was a nightmare to weld.

My overall question is. Is it better to engineer and detail a structural piece for speed and efficiency like what my company clearly attempted to do thinking "oh they are only 1/4" welds it'll take less time". Over taking a bit extra time to engineer and detail a piece that has bigger welds in more convenient locations? In some spots i had to literally blindly weld away from me in overhead position, and my company is supposed to be a leader in the industry...

[Anonymous No.10802191]

Safety first
Then profit
if making it easy to weld vs hard to weld going to save time and money well you are going to have to earn your pay. If you think the structure is unsafe or the weld wont come out good as a result of how it was designed you should really talk to your manager about it.

[Anonymous No.10802204]

>>10802191
The structure itself is safe, the welding is over all 'sound'.

The question is mainly geared towards the amount of time I spent to weld the stupid thing. Easily accessible welding is far more efficient then trying to figure out how to angle my welding gun or rod.

We did a building in Manhattan that was very structurally sound ( not over the top) and was very efficient to weld.

[Anonymous No.10802214]

>the company
I don't want to work for or with you though. I want to help your enemies kill you.

[Anonymous No.10802218]

>>10802204
It may then just depend on the engineer who designed it. Some engineers are retarded man. Some are great at their jobs. Id probably just mention in passing to your boss that the welds are tricky and that they could've been designed safer for the welder and in a more efficient way.

[Anonymous No.10802262]

>>10802178
>>>/diy/
lots of tradesmen there, including welders

[Anonymous No.10802531]

>>10802178
Here's a redpill for you anon. Engineers both don't know and don't give a flying shit about practical welding and applying it properly. There's no rhyme or reason to their weld call outs other than most of them are auto generated by whatever software they're using. That's all there is to it

[Anonymous No.10802658]

>>10802531
engineers don't. but that's what detailers are for. if they don't do their job the engineers look like shit.

[xxXSuiseisekiXxx No.10803351]

>>10802178
I'm a Boilermaker by Trade. I've worked in workshops for pad welding to concrete water pipe lobster backs. And Power plant Maintenance shutdown work.
I've been in close contact with plan managers and design teams.
They do a fuck ton of work to account for the construction phase and maintenance.
But sadly you can only do so much for ergonomics. Think about any time you've moved house.
All the furniture just magically fits trough all doorways and halls. If you tetris it the right ways.

But there's always rules to the exception. Like a grand piano.

Typically in the fuckups in the heavy steel industry are actually with the construction workers not thinking laterally.
Like not realizing that a telescopic crane can be set up on the other side of the site to reach over between the power lines and workface.
Or as a root cause of the problem. The coal stations I've worked on. One day 0 issue was the placement of UB supports 100m from where they should have been.
>how you fuck up 100mm?
By reading the tame measure from the 100mm mark.
This screw up was just enough to make them a issue for installing swirler duct segments for the coal feed to the boiler.
The fix luckily was just bending the flanges in one spot to give the wiggle room.
Pretty good spacial awareness given designs and standards from 70 years ago.

In modern design, a new problem. Complacency and lack of self criticism via the use of CAD.
Program are a god send for the steel workers. As measurements are all given without the need to correlate across plan sheets.

But the designer and engineer behind it. They're drawing structures at a pace that causes oversight.
One sheet I had was for a UB 2000mm long with 2 plate flanges spaced 100m apart 300m from the end.
The cad image however. Shows an impossible configuration. As by 'scale' they should have been at even points

How the fuck did computer say yes to that, and how many more parts correlated to that horizontal structural beam.