A few days ago I took the Americam Welding Societies part B practical welding Inspection examination. All A.W.S. certified welding inspectors have to take the part B test every 9 years or show 80 hours training in the field to keep their inspection certs. in order. I remembered how the original tests were so I opted to pay for a one day refresher course through A.W.S. to brush up a little. It is known by anyone who have taken this test that A.W.S. will insert some "trick" questions aimed at trying to make you make a mistake and see if you are really reading the inspection criteria. I went through the course and took the practice exams with good results. You see I inspect welds on a daily basis, write new welding procedures, I am administrator of my companies ASME R-stamp program and have been a code welder on pipe and tubes for 29 years. You might say that I have lived/worked welding since I was old enough to work and that I have made it my life understanding welding and it's proper use in the industrial U.S.A. On the day of the test I arrived with a good attitude and was ready to get on with the 2 hour timed test. After getting through the registering and so on the test got underway. I was issued a set of inspection criteria, a set of plastic weld samples and some inspection tools. The weld criteria is different than any other standard or code that one would use in the field. It is designed to see if you can interpret the given code and not let what you currently know interfere. The test consisted of 46 questions about the weld samples and the inspection criteria. This should have been easy for someone that inspects welds on a daily basis. I was amazed to see that every single question on the test was designed to try to make me make a mistake. The multiple choice answers were so close to the same that one is constantly catching himself double checking to see if he did mark the correct answer. It was very evident that A.W.S. was not interested in giving a fair test to the several veteran welding inspectors that were in the room and had paid the near 1000.00 to take the test. I left the room that day wondering if I had made the required 70% needed to pass the test or not and feeling insulted by A.W.S. The thing is if I don't pass the test then A.W.S. will pull my certs until I take and pass the entire 3 part (6 hour) test at an additional cost of over 1000 dollars. My question is to all the people that have ever taken this test before. Do any of you feel that A.W.S. is giving a fair test or does it seem the test is geared to have a high rate failure?
Pipewelder
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