Hi fellas I'm a young 23 year old fabricator who has been at it for 5 years, I'm thinking of bettering myself at the welding institute, has anybody else had experience there? Would love to hear opinions
The two companies I have worked for have used TWI for assessment and certification, though in plastics. Now this is over the last twenty years, and I personally have not been in the programme...I was always signed up but always too 'important' to take the time out. I have reservations about some of the anomalies between training/testing and the real world of fabrication, but again I must stress that this is plastics.
Probably not at all helpful, but better to be aware.
We use the TWI at work for metal analysis such as fatigue modelling etc plus my brother in law works there. or to put it another way I can not comment directly on their training courses, but can comment that they are a well recognised and respected international organisation so it would look good on your CV to have courses by them.
With any training course you will have to deal with theory, it is done for a reason and whilst it can be difficult to appreciate at the time, a sound theoretical knowledge of the fundamental principles is a very valuable thing to have and can be applied in may situations. Particularly if you can get an employer to pay for or at least contribute to the bill I would go for every relevant course you can get, as well as becoming more skilled and knowledgeable you stand a much better chance of progressing through your career should you want to.
I maintain a lot of the inspection equipment used by the local branch of TWI and there is always a course of some description in progress when I'm over there so they must be doing something right.
Thank you for your replies. I appreciate that TWI is thought of quite highly in the industry, could anyone give me any info on what the theory entails?
the twi is branded as the home of welding...
at my work we use them and that is very special welding.... but then saying that my manager is on the board to review any of there welding papers befor they are released.