Repair welders decide what is saved and what is scrapped: HR for steel casting foundries

A steel foundry pours crusher jaws, cement mill liners and bogie frames, some weighing several tonnes. After knockout and riser cutting, magnetic particle checks find a crack near a boss on a large frame. Scrapping it means remelting a week's work. Repairing it means excavating the crack, preheating the section, welding in layers with baked electrodes, grinding flush and checking again. Two people in the plant can do that repair to the buyer's satisfaction. One of them handed in his notice on Monday.

Our steel casting foundries HR page opens its list of strains with this: repair welders decide what is saved and what is scrapped. Few people outside the fettling bay see how much value passes through their hands.

Steel throws more defects than iron: shrinkage cavities under heavy sections, hot tears at junctions, gas holes, sand and slag inclusions. Inspection by dye penetrant, magnetic particle or radiography shows where they are. The repair welder then gouges or grinds to sound metal, judging depth by eye and by repeated checks. He preheats the area to the right range, holds interpass temperature, chooses electrodes from the baking oven and lays weld in a sequence that will not crack the casting further. Manganese steel liners need a quite different hand from low alloy frames. Afterwards the casting may go back into the heat treatment furnace before final inspection.

• Castings queue in the fettling bay. With one welder short, defective pieces wait, and dispatch dates slide for a whole order.
• Repairs rushed to meet a truck. A welder told to clear the queue tonight cuts preheat short, and the crack reappears at the buyer's inspection.
• Unclear calls on repair or scrap. Production wants everything saved, quality wants deep defects scrapped, and the welder is left to decide alone.
• Poaching. Other foundries and fabrication shops know who the good repair welders are and phone them directly.
• Wear and tear. Welding over a preheated casting for hours means heat, fume and awkward positions, often late at night.

Repair welding is learnt on the job, over years, from an older welder. The welder carries no grade that says repair welder rather than fabrication welder, so pay drifts towards whatever the market offers fresh hands. No junior is assigned, because the queue never empties long enough. Repair-or-scrap authority almost never appears on paper, so the welder carries blame for calls that were never his to make. And because heavy orders arrive in lumps, the shortage shows only once a big order is already overdue.

1. 1

   First, map repair skills and cover

   List each repair welder against types of work: minor surface repairs, deep excavation on carbon steel, low alloy repairs needing strict preheat, manganese steel. Mark who covers each if one is absent.

2. 2

   Write down who decides repair or scrap

   Name who rules on major repairs, typically the quality head jointly with production, and the limits within which the welder may proceed alone. Put it in the role descriptions.

3. 3

   Keep a repair map for each casting

   A sketch or photo marking each repair, its depth, the welder, the preheat used and the inspection result. It protects the welder when a buyer queries a repair, and shows who does what well.

4. 4

   Build a grade path

   Trainee repair welder on minor repairs under watch, repair welder on carbon steel, senior repair welder on alloy and manganese work and major repairs. Each step carries its own wage.

5. 5

   Pair trainees on low-risk work

   Young welders work beside a senior on surface repairs and grinding first, then on deeper excavations, with the senior signing each type of repair off.

6. 6

   Hire against the order book

   Each month, go through confirmed heavy orders with the production head, and start looking early for welders when a peak is coming.

Pattern number, heat number and casting weight.
Sketch or photo with each defect circled and numbered.
For each defect: type, depth after excavation, how it was found.
Preheat range used, interpass temperature checked, electrode batch from the oven.
Welder's name and the date of each repair.
Re-inspection method and result, with the inspector's initials.
Whether the piece went back for stress relieving before dispatch.
Who approved a major repair, where the buyer's rules call for approval.

Long hours over a preheated casting take a toll. Rotate welders off the hottest jobs, schedule breaks, keep drinking water close and use fume extraction where it is fitted. Avoid one welder doing several night repairs in a row because a truck is due. Our page on health, safety and wellbeing for steel foundries covers heavy-pour and crane habits that sit alongside this.

Set repair welder pay against nearby foundries and heavy fabricators, as described in compensation benchmarking for steel foundries. A skills record per person, showing which repairs each can do, is set out in competency and talent management for steel foundries. For planning hires ahead of heavy orders, see recruitment for steel foundries. Patterns shared by every kind of foundry are gathered on our casting sector overview.