Welding Services: MIG, TIG and MMA

Welding is the part of fabrication that hides. Once a structure is painted, galvanised, or installed, nobody can see the weld. What they can see is whether the staircase holds, whether the gate repair lasts, whether the machine component fits when it goes back for CNC work. The quality of the weld determines all of that.

Not all welders are the same. Not all welding is coded. And on structural work — staircases, mezzanines, beam connections, fire escapes — the difference between a coded weld and an uncoded one is not academic. An uncoded structural weld is potentially illegal, uninsurable, and dangerous. If it fails, the structure fails.

Our welders are qualified to BS EN ISO 9606-1: 2017 — the international standard for welder qualification testing in fusion welding of steels. We are fully coded in MIG and TIG under BS EN 1090 EXC2 with complete traceability on every structural weld: consumables, procedures, and operator documented per job. MMA welding is available for non-structural applications. Site welding capability — portable TIG and generator MIG — covers jobs that cannot come into the workshop.

What Coded Welding Means

A coded welder has passed an independently administered qualification test to BS EN ISO 9606-1: 2017 — the international standard for welder qualification testing in fusion welding of steels. They have demonstrated, to a tested standard, that they can produce a structurally sound weld to the required specification.

On structural work, the weld procedure is also documented: specified amperage, approved consumables, required shielding gas, qualified operator. Every weld on structural work at Advantage is carried out by a qualified welder following a written procedure. Consumables — welding wire, shielding gas — are traceable to batch level.

“I would not go like for like on price with a company that does not work to the same standards that we do. If the job needs to be coded, then you have to pay for that.”

Not all local fabricators hold BS EN 1090 EXC2 accreditation. If you are commissioning structural welding and you are not certain your fabricator is coded, ask. The accreditation is verifiable.

How to Tell If You Have Been Given a Good Weld

Most customers cannot assess a weld technically — and they should not need to. But the visual signs of a poor weld are visible to anyone who knows what to look for.

• Start and finish of the weld — uniform, or are there craters and pinholes?
• Fusion — does the weld bond both pieces of parent metal equally, or does it favour one side?
• Bead consistency — does it look the same all the way along, or does it vary in width, height, or texture?
• Porosity — are there holes or pitting in the weld surface? Air holes in a weld are a structural weakness.
• Undercut — is there a groove cut into the parent metal along the weld edge? That reduces the effective thickness.
• Spatter — on a TIG weld, there should be none. On a MIG weld, it should have been cleaned off.

Every weld at Advantage goes through visual inspection against these criteria before the job leaves the workshop. On structural work, joint preparation is photographed as quality evidence before welding begins.

Project Examples

Shopping Centre Staircase — Structural Multi-Run Welding

A thick-walled box section staircase for a public shopping centre. The wall thickness demanded full butt weld preparation — edges ground to a double-V profile, parts tack welded and photographed as quality evidence, then multi-run passes applied in accordance with the documented weld procedure.

A single-pass attempt on material of this thickness would have produced a structurally weak weld. The penetration would have been insufficient. The weld would have looked complete from the outside and been structurally compromised inside.

“It was a staircase in a shopping centre. It could have caused massive damage and loss of life.”

Visual inspection confirmed full fusion, consistent bead, no porosity, no undercut. The staircase was signed off. The public using it have no reason to think about the weld beneath the finish. That is the point.

Emergency Gate Repair — Site Welding

A fire service callout to a commercial premises required the crew to cut a gate lock to gain access. The job was done — but the site was left unsecured. The gate could not be removed and taken to a workshop.

We attended site within two days with portable TIG welding equipment, cleaned up the damaged cut section, and welded the lock back into position. Site welding on portable TIG is a more demanding environment than workshop conditions — no fixed bench, no controlled access to material on all sides — but the weld quality standard does not change. The gate was secured. The job was closed.

Precision Component Assemblies — Machine Shop Support

We regularly fabricate welded assemblies for precision engineering companies. The parts come to us for welding, then return to the machinist for final CNC work to tolerances significantly tighter than we hold. The dimensional accuracy of our weld — and the absence of distortion — directly determines whether the machinist can achieve their final fit.

“We fabricate to between 0.25 and 0.5mm so they can make their parts fit.”

A weld that pulls out of square, or shrinks a dimension beyond tolerance, creates a scrap part at the CNC stage. We understand what we are handing back and we hold our weld procedures accordingly. The relationship with these customers is ongoing because the quality is consistent.