An Evening of Professional Development

April 2018 | News

Ken Gauld, MD for AJT welcomed Mark Bragg, Technical Secretary, for the North Scottish Branch of The Welding Institute, to the company's Tullos facility where they hosted an evening of technical presentations and workshop tours.

The Welding Institute works to create a global network of welding and joining personnel. Aimed at students through to qualified engineers, members are offered regular CPD sessions to support career development.

The event was coordinated by Mark Bragg as part of The Welding Institutes ongoing commitment to CPD and was well attended by both members and non-members of TWI.

“I chose to hold the event at AJT Engineering as they are well established within Aberdeen and the sector on the whole. Having a multi-disciplinary skill set makes AJT a ‘one stop shop’ allowing our members to see the whole range of welding and machining in one place.”

- Mark Bragg

Throughout the evening practical demonstrations of the welding and machining operations carried out within AJT Engineering were given to a cross section of industries. Amongst the capabilities being showcased were a rotary head CNC, hot-wire GTAW cladding station and a state of the art 5 axis CNC machining centre, whose operational envelopes have been brought together to fulfil a turnkey valve block manufacture contract.

Members of AJT team were on hand throughout the evening to answer any technical queries, here the ability of the hot wire GTAW cladding cell to overlay with either CRA or base material alloy, is being discussed between the AJT team and some of the attendees, with more than 300 third party endorsed weld procedures in the AJT library, over 30 are dedicated to the GTAW process for overlaying with various consumables on a range of base materials.

An explanation on the benefits of the rotary head GTAW system was given by one of the AJT team, with the aid of a laptop based video sequence showing multiple weld locations with only one physical set-up of the large component, making considerable savings in time and cost.

Although the evening predominantly focused on welding, the large capacity machining section in the workshop stirred a high level of interest. The attendees could witness the AJT philosophy of ‘one-stop shop’ for rough machining, sub-arc welding and finish machining of large heavy pressure control equipment parts requiring recertification. This capability is enhanced by AJTs in-house post weld heat treatment capabilities, utilising an API calibrated fully programmable 880 kW twin burner, natural gas fired furnace with an internal capacity of 3m x 3m x 4m and a hearth loading of 18Te.

“AJT have one of the busiest welding shops in Aberdeen, so the evening visit showed a lot of welding activity in one place, our members could see the processes up close in a well-used hive of activity.”

- Mark Bragg

Employees from Bureau Veritas, one of the leading third-party inspectorates, made up a sizeable portion of the attendees. Here several members from the Aberdeen verification and survey teams, are having an up-close inspection of the API calibrated furnace, which will be used to carry out the post weld heat treatment on the piece of critical pressure control equipment. This equipment has been submerged arc welded, utilising one of AJT Engineering’s pre-qualified library welding procedures.

Events such as these are essential for the professional development of individuals as well as contributing to continued innovation and progress within the industry from sharing knowledge and skills.

“It’s a ladder – we all want to learn to allow us to progress.”