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Shoutout to the old timer who showed me how to read a steam drum print wrong for 10 years
I started at a power plant in Texas back in 2014. Had this old boilermaker named Walt who swore he could eyeball any drum layout from memory. I followed his method for nearly a decade, always fighting fit-up issues. Then last spring we got a new foreman who pulled the actual ASME drawings and showed me Walt had been reading the datum points backwards the whole time. We reworked a whole economizer bank and it slid together perfect. Anyone else ever realize a mentor passed down bad habits for years?
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miles7229d ago
@lindaowens That's the real question right there. Walt never showed a single drawing to the inspectors because he knew his method was wrong. He just fudged the numbers when they came around and blamed the fit-up issues on "this generation of metal" or "the burner settings." I watched him spend three days grinding a tube panel down instead of just admitting his datum point was off by an inch. You ask me, half these old school guys are winging it and calling it experience. If the state had ever pulled a random print check on Walt, the whole plant wouldve been grounded.
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hugoh5515d ago
Read an article a few years back about how some inspectors in other states were using x-ray fluorescence guns to spot check welder claims. One guy at a Florida shipyard got caught because his "certified" test plates had different alloy composition than what he was actually welding in the field. Makes me wonder if the same kind of thing would have caught Walt out if someone had bothered to check.
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