Pengpai News reporter Chen Xuhou
More than 20 years of research on welding, Chen Qingcheng has become a "national treasure-level" welder . He said that changing destiny is changed through electric welding skills.
As the foreman of the efficient welding section of the Guangchuan International Assembly Department, Chen Qingcheng led more than 50 outstanding welders to be responsible for the welding work when the ship is closed. This work is difficult and there can be no mistakes. Chen Qingcheng is under a lot of pressure. If the worker encounters a welding problem that cannot be solved, he has to solve it himself.
"The smallest ship has 50,000 tons, and the largest one has more than 300,000 tons. The welding work when a ship is closed will take 2-3 months." On the afternoon of December 5, Chen Qingcheng told The Paper (www.thepaper.cn) that his team has to weld the closing of more than 20 ships a year.
In the company, many people call Chen Qingcheng "Master Chen". How to become a "electric welding master"? Chen Qingcheng's answer is very simple: constantly summarize experience in practice and improve technology by solving problems.
The Paper learned that Chen Qingcheng has transformed the problems of ship construction and production into technical research topics. Many of his achievements have been published in core journals such as " welding technology ", " welding machine ", and "Guangdong Shipbuilding". At present, 78 technical transformation and innovation achievements have been promoted and applied in production practice.
"Welding is easy to learn, and there are many related skills competitions, so it is easy to get ahead. As long as you master the technology, you will not have to worry about work." Chen Qingcheng said that the future of welding should be mechanized and automated. He is already trying his best to promote the mechanization of welding to reduce the labor intensity of welders.

Chen Qingcheng Pengpai News reporter Chen Xuhou Picture
has participated in many major engineering construction
Chen Qingcheng, 44 years old this year, is from Meizhou, Guangdong Province. He was born in a rural family. In 1993, he entered Guangzhou Shipyard Technical School to study ship welding. Three years later, Chen Qingcheng joined Guangchuan International, a subsidiary of China Shipbuilding Corporation.
"When in school, I learned both theoretical knowledge and practical opportunities." Chen Qingcheng said that at first, he mainly learned manual arc welding. This welding technique was the most common and practical. It looked very simple. Many people who did not have professional training could do it, but it was "easy to learn but difficult to be precise". To truly meet industry standards, it requires many years of technical precipitation.
After entering Guangzhou Ship International, Chen Qingcheng entered the pressure vessel due to his good welding skills. "The people who joined this department are all technical experts", and the challenges they face are also huge. The pressure vessel part is related to the pressurization system of the entire ship. If there is any welding problem, explosions and other safety accidents may occur. Therefore, the requirements for welding are very high. "Each weld must be X-rayed to see if there are defects in the weld, and it must be 100% qualified."
"No problem can happen." Chen Qingcheng said that everyone burns the weld with their own numbered steel stamp, and they must always be responsible for this weld. In the team of more than 20 people at that time, Chen Qingcheng was a young man. He learned technology and accumulated experience with the master. He started with a relatively simple B-type welding, and started doing Class A-type welding about a year later.
After working in the pressure vessel department for six or seven years, Chen Qingcheng's welding technology has gradually matured. He said that accepting this kind of high-quality training from the beginning will be of great help to improve his technology.
In the late 1990s, Chen Qingcheng's pressure vessel department began to transform its business and undertake the steel structure welding project outside. Chen Qingcheng introduced that they have participated in the steel structure welding work of some projects such as Humen Bridge, Beijing Botanical Garden Greenhouse, and Hong Kong Disneyland.
What impressed Chen Qingcheng the most was the welding work of Humen Bridge. Humen Bridge is a large-span suspension bridge in the Pearl River Estuary. The total length of the line is 15.76 kilometers and the total length of the main bridge is 4.6 kilometers. It was completed and opened to traffic in June 1997. It is the first truly large-scale suspension bridge in my country and has won the Zhan Tianyou Civil Engineering Award. Chen Qingcheng said that for welders, welding is the most difficult when the bridge is closed. "You can usually weld flat welding , but you do not have such conditions when closing, and there will be many back welding ."
Depending on the welding position, welding can be divided into flat welding, vertical welding , horizontal welding , and overhead welding.Generally speaking, backward welding is the most difficult. The welder's perspective is facing upward, which is not conducive to operation, and the molten iron will fall down, which is easy to fail to meet the standards. Chen Qingcheng remembers that when the Humen Bridge was closed, there were a lot of inclined upward welding, and it was necessary to build a rack, but the rack was very small, which was not only difficult to operate, but also difficult to avoid falling sparks and was often burned.
"The entire department was dispatched, and the welding was done when the bridge was closed for half a year." Chen Qingcheng told The Paper that the bridge deck of the Humen Bridge was a box with many structures inside. At that time, he mostly worked in the narrow box, and it was summer. The temperature inside was very high, and he was sweating profusely after a while.

Chen Qingcheng is engaged in welding operations on the ship. Photo provided by the interviewee
Welding for more than 20 ships in a year
Around 2000, due to department mergers and business adjustments, Chen Qingcheng's department no longer does welding steel structures, but serves shipbuilding, and is responsible for welding work when the hull is closed. This also has high requirements for welding, and the weld needs to be tested with X-ray and ultrasonic to detect whether it is qualified.
"The ship environment is complex, with many structures and small space. Some locations are blocked and difficult to operate." The biggest problem encountered by Chen Qingcheng and his team is that there will be 15-meter-long seams on the vertical ground that need to be welded. If the conventional carbon dioxide gas protective welding is used, the labor intensity is high, the efficiency is low, and the welding quality is greatly affected by operating skills.
After research and learning from the foreign shipbuilding industry, Chen Qingcheng and his team introduced vertical air cushion welding, and the welding was completed by operating the machine. "A 15-meter-long weld can be completed in 2-3 hours. If the original welding method is used, it will take 2-3 days."
solved the problem of vertical welding, and encountered the problem of unstable quality of the horizontal welding joint. "There are many welding beads and mainly rely on manual operations. Not only is the labor intensity high, it often does not meet the quality standards." Chen Qingcheng bluntly stated that this problem has been a bottleneck for many years and there is no good solution.
In 2018, Chen Qingcheng and his team improved the equipment through research and summarized the method of submerged arc cross-welding, which achieved good results. "The smoke and dust are smaller, there is no arc light, and the quality is stable, and all colleagues want to come and learn it." This year, Chen Qingcheng and his team improved the equipment again, making the equipment lighter and able to move it in just two people.
For the past 20 years, Chen Qingcheng and his team have been responsible for welding the ships closed, and the ships they are responsible for have gradually upgraded from thousands of tons to more than 300,000 tons. "The closing welding of a ship takes 2-3 months." Chen Qingcheng said that a team of more than 50 people has to complete the closing welding of more than 20 ships a year.

Chen Qingcheng's team has more than 50 people, specializing in welding tasks when ships are closed. Photo provided by the interviewee
Solve more than 100 shipbuilding welding technical problems
After 24 years of rooting in the welding field, Chen Qingcheng has solved more than 100 shipbuilding welding technical problems, 78 technical transformation and innovation achievements, and 22 obtained national patent authorization. In order to stabilize the welding gun, he practiced swollen arms, and was not afraid of arc burning his eyes and burning his arms. He explored and developed the unique skills of "mirror reflection welding" and "sound recognition molding method" in the narrow space environment of the ship.
In the construction of the national brand and national weapon "Peace Ark", the ship's hardware facilities are equivalent to the level of a Class A hospital. However, the hull structure is complex and narrow, and the technical requirements are extremely high. Many weld positions cannot be seen even when welded. Chen Qingcheng faced the challenge and developed the special welding skills of "listening, fast, accurate, and ruthless" operation and promoted it. His weld X-ray film inspection pass rate reached 100% at one time. All 25 X-ray films randomly checked by the ship representatives were rated as Class I films.
In the construction of Gotland luxury passenger and roulette , which is comparable to the "jewel in the crown" of luxury cruise ship, in order to overcome the industry-recognized problem of controlling the thin plate construction technology of the center of gravity, Chen Qingcheng has studied the reasons for thin plate rigidity, welding stress, and structural instability, and has developed thin plate vertical butt single-sided welding double-sided forming and speed-shift welding welding technology and thin plate FAB, providing new welding technology for efficient construction of thin plates. At the same time, it has widely used high-efficiency welding technologies such as thin plate lightweight submerged arc welding and full-position swing trolleys to break the blind spot of high-efficiency automatic welding of thin plates equipped with thin plates, solved the problem of "orange peel" of thin plate deformation, and saved more than 1 million yuan in labor and material costs. In the end, the welding construction cycle of thin plates built on the ship was shortened by 26 days, creating more than 3 million yuan in economic benefits.
During the construction of the world's first fully powered silent propulsion scientific investigation ship, the Jiageng, was in response to the high requirements of controlling the welding accuracy error of 160 transducers and probes of the ship's multi-beam device to the high requirements of ±1.5mm. At the same time, to overcome difficulties such as narrow welding space and large welding volume, Chen Qingcheng was ordered to improve the tooling and welding methods. After countless attempts, he invented the "extended and variable welding torch". At the same time, he studied two new welding technology technologies: carbon dioxide gas protective welding operation method and irregular welding dispersion method, and finally completed the production task on schedule.
Chen Qingcheng said that in practice, there will definitely be many problems, and we must study and summarize and solve them. He likes to think about welding, "From the appearance, welding must be beautiful, which is related to factors such as equipment, materials, parameters, and operating methods, but the internal is more important. We must focus on it, constantly optimize the operating methods, and summarize experience."
With years of technical accumulation, Chen Qingcheng has transformed the problems of ship construction and production into technical research topics. His many achievements have been published in famous core journals such as "Welding Technology", "Welding Machine", and "Guangdong Shipbuilding". He systematically introduced the technical specifications and operating principles of various typical projects. At present, 78 technical transformation and innovation achievements have been promoted and applied in production practice, creating an average of more than 10 million yuan in economic benefits for the company every year.
Chen Qingcheng also used the national skill master studio platform to revise the "Welding Technology and Specifications Manual", compile the "Thin Plate Segmented Construction Technology Manual", compile the "Working Standards Manual for Welding Welders in Various Positions of CO2 Gas Protective Welding Welder Operational Specifications Manual", and produce the "Ship Welder Micro-course", which has become an important material for ship welders to learn and guide; he edited and published a set of job training materials for ship main jobs at various levels, including "Ship Welder/Welder" (junior and middle-level workers, senior, technicians and senior technicians), filling the gap in the enterprise skill level certification tutorial.
Skills Competition is a good way to select talents
As welding technology becomes more and more exquisite, Chen Qingcheng has also won more and more honors. He is a national model of labor, national technical expert, national May 1st Labor Medal, and China Youth May 4th Medal. He has won the honorary titles of "100 Outstanding Craftsmen" in central enterprises, and was selected as the "511 Talent Project" of the National Defense Science and Technology Commission. He is one of the 18 skill masters in the "Skills China" missionary film and the leader of the national skill master studio. He enjoys special government subsidies from the State Council. He was called "Master Chen" by his colleagues and was described by the media as a "national treasure-level" welder.
When I was young, Chen Qingcheng's life goal was to settle down in Guangzhou and have a stable and decent job. Now, these have been achieved, and he said that skills have changed his destiny.
As the "master" in the team, Chen Qingcheng found that it is difficult to recruit welders now. "Young people are unwilling to do it". The "dirty", "tired" and "hard" working environment have discouraged many people.
In Chen Qingcheng's view, the future of welding will definitely move towards mechanization and automation, mainly by machines, and workers can operate the machine. Therefore, he is also consciously promoting the mechanization of welding, which can improve production efficiency, reduce the labor intensity of welders, and improve their working environment.
"I have an apprentice who is only 25 years old and has won the first place in provincial and municipal skills competitions many times."Chen Qingcheng attaches importance to the training of electric welding talents and has trained 127 senior workers, 27 technicians, 4 senior technicians, and 1 national technical expert for the company. Many of his apprentices have also become skilled masters in the field of ship welding, and apprentices Zhang Bahu and Huang Rong are participating in 44 The Guangdong selection competition of the World Skills Competition won the first and third place, and won the "Guangdong Province Technical Expert", and led welders Feng Wenhu and Lei Zhenfeng to participate in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Welding Skills Competition to win gold and silver awards respectively.
Chen Qingcheng said that for the young people recruited, they will compete in skills in departments and companies, and then participate in provincial and municipal skills competitions. "Skills Competition is a good way to select talents." He believes that "everyone has the top scorer", and electric welding practitioners should carry forward the craftsman spirit of striving for excellence, constantly study and innovate, and improve their own skills.
Editor: Tang Yubing