Lack of preparation – this one should go without saying, but if you don’t take time to prepare for this test you will probably fail, regardless of how much you know about welding.

Ideally, you learn from the mistakes of others and pass on your first try. Usually you learn from your mistakes and pass on the second go-around. At the end of the day what makes it hard (or easy) is how well you prepare.īelow are, in our opinion, the major contributing factors to failing the exam on the first try. We don’t necessarily agree with this, but it goes to show that the CWI exam is very challenging. Some professional engineers that have taken both the PE exam and the CWI exam say the CWI exam is much harder.

Ability to understand and apply documents describing weld requirementsīack to our original question, how hard is the CWI exam? This exam is extremely hard.

Welding experience (helpful but not obligatory).

Knowledge of drawings and specifications.

The CWI must have a wide range of knowledge and skills including, but not limited to the following: Welding inspection goes way beyond simply looking at welds. A CWI has a tremendous responsibility as he or she is involved in the determination of weld quality according to applicable codes. However, if you are serious about becoming a CWI you need to be OK with the fact that the test is very challenging. After all, the fee for taking the test as of the writing of this article is $1,065 ($850 for AWS members).Ĭlick here to get free CWI Exam sample questions Some go as far as saying that AWS makes it impossible to pass this exam in order to make more money off of hard working individuals. Why is the passing rate so low? If you ask 20 people you probably get at least 15 different answers. The body of knowledge for the CWI exam can be owerwhelming.

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