Weld quality is hard to judge consistently. Two inspectors can look at the same joint and disagree, judgment drifts across a long shift, and when a weld fails downstream the paper trail rarely explains why. A weld inspection in Flaggity analyzes a photo of a weld for defects and ties every observation to a recognized welding standard — so the assessment is consistent and the record is defensible.
Before you start
- Get a clear view of the weld. Clean off slag or spatter if it's hiding the bead, and make sure you can see the toes and the surrounding base metal.
- Decide which welder the inspection belongs to. It's optional, but attributing welds is what later builds a performance picture per person.
- AI weld inspection is available on Professional and higher plans.
Running the inspection
- 1 Choose New Inspection, then Weld.
- 2 Select the facility the work was done at, and the welder if you're attributing it.
- 3 Upload your weld photo or photos — up to your plan's per-inspection photo limit. For a complex joint, multiple angles give the AI more to work with.
- 4 Submit. The AI analyzes the bead profile, surface condition, and visible defects against welding codes such as AWS D1.1 and ISO 5817.
- 5 Wait for the result — typically under two minutes.
Reading the result
Each finding names the likely defect (for example porosity, undercut, or an out-of-profile bead), assigns a severity so you know how serious it is, explains in plain language what the AI observed, and cites the specific standard clause it relates to. A weld can come back clean, or with one or more findings. The citation is what matters most — it turns 'this looks wrong' into 'this doesn't meet clause X', which is what an auditor or customer wants to see.
What happens next
If the weld is clean, generate a report or a certificate to file or hand to the customer. If a finding needs to be corrected, open an NCR directly from it — that starts the formal track-to-closure process, and the corrective action lives in a linked CAPA. After a repair, re-inspect to confirm the joint now passes; that re-inspection becomes part of the record too.
Common questions
Does the AI replace my qualified weld inspector? No. It's a consistency and documentation layer. It flags and cites defects the same way every time; a competent person still makes the final acceptance decision.
What if I disagree with a finding? Use your judgment — you're the inspector of record. The value is that the AI's reasoning and citation are written down, so a disagreement is a documented conversation, not a guess.
How many photos should I take? Enough to clearly show the joint. One sharp photo is fine for a simple weld; add angles for anything complex or safety-critical, up to your plan limit.