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Got yelled at by a foreman for skipping a purge on a 6" sch 40 line
Was working a shutdown at a refinery in Baton Rouge last month and figured I'd save time by not purging the backside on a stainless weld. Foreman caught me, made me grind it out and redo it right there in front of the whole crew. Has anyone else had a close call cut corners like that?
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milam421d ago
The way people cut corners in welding reminds me of how everyone skips the little steps everywhere now. It's not just in pipe work, it's in everything from how people cook to how they drive. You see someone run a red light to save 30 seconds and they end up causing a pileup. Or you watch a guy at the grocery store leave his cart in a parking spot because walking it back to the corral is too much effort. Same thing happens with relationships too, people skip the hard conversations and then wonder why things blow up later. Your foreman grinding out that weld was probably the best thing that could happen to you, because it forced you to sit with the shame and feel how stupid shortcuts feel when you get caught. That kind of lesson sticks with you longer than a slap on the wrist.
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That Baton Rouge refinery has a 6 inch sch 40 line that's probably carrying something that will KILL you if it leaks. I worked shutdowns in Louisiana for 7 years and saw a guy get third degree burns from a steam line that wasn't purged properly. The thing nobody talks about is that stainless steel welds are BRITTLE if you don't backpurge them. You get that sugar in the weld and it looks fine on the surface but cracks out under pressure six months later. Your foreman probably saved you from being fired when the client did their xray inspection and found porosity. Those shutdowns have NDT guys crawling everywhere with cameras and gamma ray machines. One failed weld on your ticket and you're blacklisted from every refinery in the gulf coast.
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