Recently Kristen Merlo, an Applications Engineer at EWI, was recently accepted as the 2nd Vice Chair for the AWS B4.0 committee. The B4.0 committee creates and approves specifications for physical testing of welds and is widely accepted by manufactures and filler metal suppliers alike. The B4.0 specification provides guidance on destructive testing methods for welds used in fabrication and manufacturing in all industries. It is frequently referred to by many other specifications, including other AWS specifications and military specs like NAVSEA.
Being a physical testing lab, we use the specification daily. Nearly every weld test we do is performed to the B4.0 specification. Frequently our customers will ask us for our interpretation of the specification for their specific application. This can be tricky at times because we don’t always have good understanding of why the committee wrote the specification the way they did. With Kristen on the committee, she can not only provide interpretation of the specification for our customers, she can also provide commentary as to why the spec is written the way that it is.
In addition to being able to have an understanding and comment on the why’s of the specification, she is also well informed about upcoming changes to the specification. This allows us to be ready for the change and also communicate the impact of the change to our customers.
Congratulations Kristen!