Zylinderkopf
Mechanical
- Dec 30, 2005
- 45
Greetings to my engineering colleagues:
Please forgive me in advance, as I was not entirely certain as to whether my enquiry should either be posted in this forum (as was thread 725-111547) or the “Corporate Survival – How to Improve Myself…” forum (as was thread 725-138453); both of these “threads” have some relevance to my question but did not address my specific concerns. Here goes…
I’ll turn 49 years of age this year, and have a BSME from an ABET-accredited university. I came to engineering work at the ripe age of 39, after bombing-out of AAA then AA baseball; a stint as an oil refinery operator gave me the “piping and fixed equipment” bug, I guess, so I went back to school at night…
I did not take the FE exam (please, not too many pieces of rotten fruit thrown my way). Having completed a couple of years with an offshore construction company, I went to work in the PRC, Japan and finally ROK. While in Korea I went through some bad politics with the local management of the shipyard that I worked in and I returned back to the USA in the beginning of 2006 to work for a mining company – compared with my previous oil and gas work, the job is not quite as challenging, but it is very steady and pays o.k. I have been a 05/50 “hands-on” field engineering / desk-work design “type” during my engineering career and I have decided to focus on Welding Engineering as a “specialty” because I have very much enjoyed piping and structural fabrication projects. If it should matter, I did receive a certification in SMAW and FCAW (structure and pipe) from a local community college just prior to going overseas.
I am in dire need of your advice in this area – my sincere hope is that obtaining the subject Certification would bring me to the threshold of having the tools necessary to focus the remainder of my career in way of Welding Engineering, and, ideally, to obtain a position as a Welding Engineer (my present company has no such position and I do not anticipate that they will create one at any time in the future). My naïve prejudice has been developed by speaking in the past with some BSME’s that have called themselves “Welding Engineers” but have neither have had any certification nor had any graduate diploma in this area; and, frankly speaking, I did not find them (in my instances, at least) to be completely reliable – so, I just resorted early-on to ferreting-out the information that I needed from D1.1 on my own…
I think that Welding Engineering graduate schools (via distance education, e.g. Ohio SU) are nice, but not so appealing to me such that I wish to attempt, in earnest, to seek successful enrollment in and complete this type of program; time and money are a big part of the way that I feel here – my company will not reimburse me for the AWS certification but, my Japanese wife has generously agreed not to cut me apart with her katana if I pay for it myself (it’s not that expensive, really…).
I have also read in the threads that I have referenced at the beginning of this diatribe, that there is some International Welding Engineering certification from somewhere? In my case, should this be a preference to the analogous(?) certification that the AWS offers?
Thank you all, very much, for your kind consideration of my enquiry – please know that any advice that you give me will not go to waste.
Best Regards,
Pete
Please forgive me in advance, as I was not entirely certain as to whether my enquiry should either be posted in this forum (as was thread 725-111547) or the “Corporate Survival – How to Improve Myself…” forum (as was thread 725-138453); both of these “threads” have some relevance to my question but did not address my specific concerns. Here goes…
I’ll turn 49 years of age this year, and have a BSME from an ABET-accredited university. I came to engineering work at the ripe age of 39, after bombing-out of AAA then AA baseball; a stint as an oil refinery operator gave me the “piping and fixed equipment” bug, I guess, so I went back to school at night…
I did not take the FE exam (please, not too many pieces of rotten fruit thrown my way). Having completed a couple of years with an offshore construction company, I went to work in the PRC, Japan and finally ROK. While in Korea I went through some bad politics with the local management of the shipyard that I worked in and I returned back to the USA in the beginning of 2006 to work for a mining company – compared with my previous oil and gas work, the job is not quite as challenging, but it is very steady and pays o.k. I have been a 05/50 “hands-on” field engineering / desk-work design “type” during my engineering career and I have decided to focus on Welding Engineering as a “specialty” because I have very much enjoyed piping and structural fabrication projects. If it should matter, I did receive a certification in SMAW and FCAW (structure and pipe) from a local community college just prior to going overseas.
I am in dire need of your advice in this area – my sincere hope is that obtaining the subject Certification would bring me to the threshold of having the tools necessary to focus the remainder of my career in way of Welding Engineering, and, ideally, to obtain a position as a Welding Engineer (my present company has no such position and I do not anticipate that they will create one at any time in the future). My naïve prejudice has been developed by speaking in the past with some BSME’s that have called themselves “Welding Engineers” but have neither have had any certification nor had any graduate diploma in this area; and, frankly speaking, I did not find them (in my instances, at least) to be completely reliable – so, I just resorted early-on to ferreting-out the information that I needed from D1.1 on my own…
I think that Welding Engineering graduate schools (via distance education, e.g. Ohio SU) are nice, but not so appealing to me such that I wish to attempt, in earnest, to seek successful enrollment in and complete this type of program; time and money are a big part of the way that I feel here – my company will not reimburse me for the AWS certification but, my Japanese wife has generously agreed not to cut me apart with her katana if I pay for it myself (it’s not that expensive, really…).
I have also read in the threads that I have referenced at the beginning of this diatribe, that there is some International Welding Engineering certification from somewhere? In my case, should this be a preference to the analogous(?) certification that the AWS offers?
Thank you all, very much, for your kind consideration of my enquiry – please know that any advice that you give me will not go to waste.
Best Regards,
Pete
