Advanced Welder 1B

Course Description

Advanced Welder 1B prepares students for advancement in the welding industry. They learn to set up equipment for SMAW and GMAW open-root V-groove heavy-wall pipe welds, develop an understanding of fabrication techniques including pipefitting methods and take-outs, and are introduced to alloy metals and aluminium. To continue in the programme, students must pass the course with a C or better.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, PMT is the Precision Metals prefix, and the 0000-level number marks this as a postsecondary adult vocational (PSAV) clock-hour course. Daytona State publishes it at 225 clock hours with a $1,176.65 lab fee, prerequisite PMT0077C, offered fall. It carries zero college credit.

Two things distinguish this course from its prerequisite. Heavy-wall pipe means many more fill passes, greater heat input, more accumulated distortion, and a joint that takes far longer to complete — endurance and consistency become as important as technique. And the introduction to alloy metals and aluminium opens the materials that pay: stainless and aluminium welding commands premiums, and both behave nothing like carbon steel.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Apply welding safety practice appropriate to alloy and aluminium welding, including fume hazards.
• Apply hot work, fire watch, and confined space procedures.
• Interpret welding symbols, prints, and welding procedure specifications.
• Set up SMAW and GMAW equipment for heavy-wall pipe welding.
• Prepare heavy-wall V-groove joints and control fit-up across greater thickness.
• Deposit open-root passes in heavy-wall pipe.
• Deposit multiple fill passes with correct sequence, overlap, and interpass cleaning.
• Manage heat input and interpass temperature across a multi-pass weld.
• Control distortion in heavy-wall and restrained joints.
• Weld heavy-wall pipe in the 2G, 5G, and 6G positions.
• Describe preheat requirements and when they apply.
• Describe carbon steel metallurgy, the heat-affected zone, and hydrogen cracking.
• Describe alloy steels, their applications, and their welding considerations.
• Describe stainless steels, their grades, and their distinctive welding behaviour.
• Describe sensitization, carbide precipitation, and distortion in stainless welding.
• Describe aluminium and its alloys and why they weld differently from steel.
• Prepare aluminium correctly, including oxide removal and cleanliness requirements.
• Set up equipment for aluminium welding, including spool gun or push-pull systems.
• Perform advanced pipefitting layout, including take-outs, offsets, and branch connections.
• Calculate rolling offsets and complex pipe geometry.
• Perform visual inspection and identify discontinuities in multi-pass welds.
• Diagnose defects and correct the underlying technique or parameter.
• Prepare test coupons to code requirements and describe qualification testing.
• Maintain equipment, consumables, and a safe work area.

Optional Outcomes

• Perform GTAW root passes on pipe.
• Describe flux-cored and metal-cored applications on heavy wall.
• Describe post-weld heat treatment.
• Describe non-destructive testing methods and their selection.
• Describe welding codes and qualification documentation.
• Prepare for a specific employer or code performance qualification test.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Safety for alloy and aluminium welding
• Hot work, fire watch, and confined space
• Symbols, prints, and procedure specifications
• Heavy-wall equipment setup
• Heavy-wall joint preparation and fit-up
• Open-root passes in heavy wall
• Multi-pass fill sequence and interpass cleaning
• Heat input and interpass temperature
• Distortion in heavy-wall and restrained joints
• Heavy-wall pipe positions
• Preheat
• Carbon steel metallurgy and hydrogen cracking
• Alloy steels
• Stainless steels and their grades
• Sensitization and stainless distortion
• Aluminium and its alloys
• Aluminium preparation and cleanliness
• Aluminium equipment setup
• Advanced pipefitting layout
• Rolling offsets and complex geometry
• Visual inspection of multi-pass welds
• Defect diagnosis and correction
• Test coupons and qualification
• Equipment and consumable maintenance

Optional Topics

• GTAW root passes
• Flux-cored and metal-cored on heavy wall
• Post-weld heat treatment
• Non-destructive testing selection
• Codes and qualification documentation
• Employer test preparation

Resources & Tools

• Welding: Principles and Applications (Jeffus) and Modern Welding (Althouse) — carried forward.
• Pipe Welding Procedures (Hoobasarian & Rossi) — the pipe-specific reference.
• Pipe Fitter's and Pipe Welder's Handbook (Frankland) — the layout and take-out reference; keep it in your toolbox.
• Welding Metallurgy (Sindo Kou) — advanced, and the reference if the alloy and aluminium content interests you.
• AWS D1.1 (steel), AWS D1.2 (aluminium), AWS D1.6 (stainless), and ASME Section IX — the governing codes; programmes normally provide access.
• American Welding Society (aws.org) — free certification information and the CWI pathway.
• OSHA — free: welding standard (29 CFR 1910 Subpart Q), hexavalent chromium standard (critical for stainless), and confined space requirements.
• NIOSH — free welding fume and manganese guidance.
• Lincoln Electric and Miller Electric technical libraries — free, and their aluminium and stainless process guides are genuinely useful.
• The Aluminum Association — free alloy designation and welding guidance.
• Arc time — again, the only resource that matters. Ask what the $1,176.65 fee covers before buying consumables separately.

Career Pathways

• Pipe welder — SOC 51-4121; the destination, and heavy-wall and alloy capability widens the jobs available.
• Stainless and alloy welder — food processing, pharmaceutical, chemical, and sanitary piping all require stainless work and pay premiums.
• Aluminium welder — marine and boatbuilding is a substantial Florida sector, and aluminium capability is comparatively scarce.
• Power generation and utilities — FPL, Duke Energy Florida, TECO, JEA; outage work pays premium rates.
• Shipbuilding and marine repair — Jacksonville, Tampa, and the ports.
• Petrochemical and process piping — often travel work at high day rates.
• Aerospace fabrication — Space Coast; aluminium and specialty alloys, with cleared roles paying more.
• Industrial maintenance — steadier hours than construction.
• Pipeline welding — the highest-paid welding work.
• Welding inspection — the AWS Certified Welding Inspector credential; easier on the body and well paid.
• Welding supervision, estimating, and instruction.
• Mobile welding self-employment — see this repository's DIG2510 guide on the business side.

Special Information

⚠⚠ This is a PSAV clock-hour course — the hours are the requirement

• A 0000-level SCNS number denotes postsecondary adult vocational instruction, measured in clock hours rather than college credits. This course carries zero college credit, and the hour figure is the real measurement.
• Attendance is a completion requirement, not a policy preference. Hours missed are hours owed, and in welding the hours are literally arc time — you cannot make up skill you did not practise.
• PSAV credit does not transfer as general education and does not carry the A.A.'s junior-status guarantee. Some Florida colleges award articulated credit toward a related A.S. degree — ask specifically and get the answer in writing.
• Financial aid rules differ for clock-hour programmes in eligibility, disbursement, and satisfactory progress. Ask the financial aid office rather than assuming.
• The credential and the certification are the point, not the transcript. Employers hire welders on tested performance; see the certification flag below.

225 hours is roughly six full working weeks in a fall term. Combined with the 375 hours of PMT0077C, the two courses total 600 clock hours — and they are consecutive, so plan employment and finances across both.

⚠⚠ Welding safety — the hazards that cause permanent harm

• Fume is the hazard that is easiest to ignore and hardest to undo. Welding fume contains metal oxides and gases, and the composition depends on the base metal, the filler, and any coating. Manganese exposure is associated with a permanent neurological condition resembling Parkinson disease, and hexavalent chromium — produced when welding stainless steel — is a known human carcinogen with a very low OSHA permissible exposure limit.
• Use local exhaust ventilation and position yourself out of the plume. General room ventilation is not adequate protection at the arc, and keeping your head out of the fume is the single most effective habit.
• Coatings make fume far more dangerous. Galvanized steel produces zinc oxide fume causing metal fume fever; painted, plated, and solvent-degreased metal can produce highly toxic gases. Chlorinated solvents near an arc can form phosgene. Clean the metal and know what is on it.
• Confined spaces kill welders. Shielding gas displaces oxygen, fume concentrates, and the atmosphere can become lethal without any warning sign. Confined space entry requires permit procedures, atmospheric testing, ventilation, and an attendant outside — and the classic fatality is a second person entering to help.
• Arc eye (photokeratitis) is a burn to the cornea from ultraviolet radiation, it appears hours later, and it is intensely painful. It is entirely preventable with correct shade selection, and it can be caused by watching someone else's arc.
• Ultraviolet also burns skin — cover everything, including the neck and the gap at the wrists.
• Fire and explosion. Sparks travel far further than expected, smoulder for hours, and fall through gaps to floors below. Hot work permits, fire watch, and clearing combustibles are procedures, not paperwork. Never weld or cut on a container that held flammable material — this is a recurring fatal accident.
• Compressed gas cylinders must be secured upright, capped when moved, and kept from heat. Oxygen and oil or grease is an ignition hazard. Acetylene has pressure limits for a physical reason.
• Electric shock is a real risk, particularly in damp conditions and confined spaces; keep gloves and clothing dry and insulate yourself from the workpiece.
• Noise, heat stress, and ergonomics all accumulate. Florida heat plus welding gear plus a fire-resistant jacket is a genuine heat illness risk — hydrate deliberately and take breaks.
• Read the safety data sheet for every consumable. It states the fume constituents, which is what determines your ventilation and respiratory protection.

Two hazards intensify in this course specifically. Stainless steel welding produces hexavalent chromium, a known human carcinogen with a very low permissible exposure limit and its own OSHA standard — local exhaust and correct respiratory protection are not optional when welding stainless. And heavy-wall multi-pass welding means far more total arc time per joint, so cumulative fume and heat exposure per weld rises substantially.

⚠ Heavy wall changes the problem: heat management and endurance

• Many passes means accumulated heat. Interpass temperature control matters on heavy wall in a way it does not on thin material — too hot and you degrade mechanical properties and risk cracking; too cold on some materials and you risk lack of fusion.
• Distortion accumulates and is harder to reverse. Welding sequence, back-stepping, and balanced deposition are the controls, and planning the sequence before you start is what experienced welders do.
• Restraint changes everything. A joint that cannot move puts the stress into the weld instead, and restrained heavy-wall joints are where cracking appears.
• Interpass cleaning is not optional. Slag left between passes becomes an inclusion, and inclusions are what radiography finds. Clean every pass, every time — students skip this when tired, which is exactly when it matters.
• Hydrogen cracking is a delayed failure. It can appear hours or days after welding, which means a weld that looked fine can fail inspection later. Low-hydrogen electrode handling and storage is the control, and rod that has absorbed moisture is a defect waiting to happen.
• Preheat exists for metallurgical reasons, not for convenience, and skipping it on material that requires it produces cracking.
• Endurance is a real assessed quality. A heavy-wall 6G joint takes a long time, your body position changes throughout, and the cap pass at the end must be as good as the root pass at the start. Fatigue is where consistency breaks down.
• Pace yourself and take breaks between passes. A rushed fill pass on hour three costs the whole coupon.

⚠ Aluminium and stainless behave nothing like carbon steel

• Aluminium's oxide layer melts far above the base metal. That is the central difficulty: the surface oxide must be removed mechanically or broken up by the arc, and a stainless brush dedicated only to aluminium is standard practice — a brush used on steel contaminates the aluminium.
• Aluminium conducts heat rapidly and does not change colour before melting. There is no visual warning that you are about to lose the puddle, which is why beginners burn through repeatedly.
• Cleanliness is absolute for aluminium. Oil, moisture, and oxide all produce porosity, and aluminium porosity is unforgiving.
• Feeding aluminium wire is a mechanical problem. The wire is soft and birdnests easily — spool guns and push-pull systems exist for that reason, along with correct liners and drive rolls.
• Aluminium requires more heat input to start and less to sustain, which makes technique adjustments mid-weld normal rather than a fault.
• Stainless distorts more than carbon steel — higher thermal expansion and lower conductivity — so heat control and sequence matter more.
• Stainless requires backing gas on the root for many applications; oxidized root passes ("sugaring") ruin corrosion resistance and are rejected.
• Sensitization degrades corrosion resistance when stainless is held in a critical temperature range, which is why interpass temperature and low-carbon or stabilized grades matter.
• Keep stainless and carbon steel tooling separate. Carbon contamination from a shared grinder or brush causes rusting and rejection.
• These materials pay because they are harder. Aluminium and stainless capability is comparatively scarce, and it is the direct commercial reason this content is in the course.

⚠ Take the qualification tests — they are the actual credential

• Welders are hired on tested performance, not on transcripts. An employer gives you a weld test and hires on the result.
• Qualification is process-, position-, material-, and thickness-specific. Each additional qualification widens the work available to you, and they compound.
• 6G is the qualification employers ask about, because it covers the widest range of other positions.
• Heavy-wall qualification extends your thickness range, which matters for code work — this is a concrete commercial reason to take this course seriously.
• Alloy and aluminium qualifications are separate from carbon steel and are worth having.
• Qualifications lapse without documented continuity. Keep records of the processes you have used and when.
• Ask the programme which tests you can sit and whether the fee covers them.
• Consider the CWI pathway early. Welding inspection requires experience plus examination, it pays well, it is far easier on the body, and knowing it exists changes how you think about a thirty-year career.
• Rule 11 applies — code editions and certification requirements change; verify with AWS and with the employer's procedures.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

PMT0078C is a 225 clock-hour PSAV course carrying zero college credit, with a $1,176.65 lab fee, offered fall, following PMT0077C. Assessment is on produced welds — visual inspection, bend tests, and possibly radiography — and a C or better is required to continue in the programme.

Use every hour of booth time you can get. The hours are the curriculum here in the most literal sense: welding is a manual skill, the only thing that improves it is arc time, and a student who finds an extra hour a day for six weeks finishes measurably better than one who does not.