The welding inspector where I work cut 4 plates, because it's my first time taking the test he wanted me to do a test one first which is fine with me. I've been practicing for a while and I'm confident in my ability to do the filler and cap, but a couple of questions are still on my mind.
It's a 3/4'' plate, no backing bar. Have to do a stringer with .035 wire first, then hot pass, filler and cap with the 1/16 ultracore HD-M wire and finally back gouge the stringer and run another bead on the back.
The setting I run are 24 volts, 20 wire, I plan on doing the test at straight 90 degrees unless it's better to tilt it a little. Apparently where I work it's ok to do that, putting it at 75 or so to make it easier but that sounds like cheating to me.
My question is should the same settings be used for the hot pass as for the filler? I've read that the hot pass is where more tests fail, so that's been worrying me a bit. And for the hot pass, do you hold on the sides longer than for the fillers?
The other question is for the cap, is it better to fill the bevel completely, grind it flush and then cap it, or to fill to almost flush and leave a little bevel use that as a guide to weld over? I've read and seen both.
Lastly, what are the usual guidelines? I've been told that the root and sometimes hot pass are supposed to be inspected before proceeding, but the guy only cut the plates, left them on my table and left. I wasn't given a weld procedure or any other instructions as to whether he needs to visually inspect it at any point and whatnot. For all I know I'm supposed to just go in in the morning and weld them both out to hand in, but then he might come back later and ask if I'm ready to take the test and it'd be a whole thing.
Aside from that, everything is out of my hands. The inspector does the cutting, preparation and bending himself. Basically I just weld out the plate, hand it to him and hope for the best. No X-ray like I was hearing from some people so that was a relief.
Advice would be greatly appreciated. I know most of the guys on these forums are well beyond the 3g tests with wire but have to start somewhere.