Weldcraft-Pro — Underwater welding training & consumables, United Kingdom

Weldcraft-Pro is not a diving school and it is not a welding consumables shop, although it touches both. It is a licensed underwater welder training programme plus a small range of wet-welding products, run by one of the most published welding engineers in the subsea industry. Commercial diving schools license the programme and deliver it with their own instructors; Weldcraft-Pro supplies the syllabus, the teaching materials, the quality assurance and the accreditation, and the certificate comes out externally awarded rather than issued in-house.

That structure matters, because it is the reason Weldcraft-Pro keeps coming up in conversations about underwater welding certification. Most underwater welding courses in the world issue a school certificate. The Weldcraft-Pro programme is approved by the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) Maritime Academy and the certificate of verified achievement is issued by EAL, part of SEMTA, the UK sector skills council for science, engineering and manufacturing technologies. Weldcraft-Pro describes it as “the only class society (ABS) approved underwater welding programme available” and “the only externally awarded underwater welding training programme to issue internationally recognised/verified qualifications anywhere in the world.” The programme is also recognised by the CPD board of IMarEST, the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology.

The course runs to 80 hours, split 40 hours dry and 40 hours wet, covering nine learning outcomes. It follows the European Welding Federation (EWF) document 570-01 syllabus for fillet welder – plate, and welder-divers are coded to ISO 15618-1:2016, AWS D3.6M:2017 or BS 4872-1:1982. It is open to welders and non-welders alike, and the technique taught is Manual Metal Arc (MMA) / Shielded Metal Arc Welding (SMAW), above and below water.

Typical class size is 4–12 students, limited by the centre's facilities. A centre needs a workshop with three-phase DC welding machines or diesel generators, welding bays with fume extraction, a classroom, and a dedicated dive tank with pump and filtration and a viewing window so the instructor or inspector can watch the diver and the test plates. Licences run for two years, and approval involves a site audit and a staff briefing before a centre can run the programme.

Weldcraft-Pro lists approved centres in seven countries. Three of them are schools that also appear in the satdiver commercial diving school directory, which makes this one of the cleaner routes for a working diver to add a coded welding qualification to an existing commercial ticket.

Currently running courses: DiveWise Tec (Belgium), YRGO (Sweden), Marex Subsea Welds (Greece), MM Matrix Integrity (M) SDN. BHD (Malaysia) and the Norwegian School of Commercial Diving (Norway). Listed but not currently running courses: Arc Subsea (Australia), ABJ Welding (South Africa), Commercial Diving Academy (Florida, USA) and Professional Diving Academy (Scotland).

Alongside the training, Weldcraft-Pro sells a short line of wet-welding hardware under the Nautilus and Firefly names.

Nautilus wet welding electrode — a rutile-based flux-coated electrode with a clear vinyl waterproof coating for resistance to water and moisture penetration; the coating also provides electrical insulation for the diver. Weldcraft-Pro describes a smooth, soft arc and easily removed slag.

Nautilus welding torch — fully dismantlable on site without special tools, with a patented collet body that can be turned to take up over 10 mm of wear (1.0 mm per revolution). Takes electrodes from 2.5 mm (3/32″) to 5.0 mm (3/16″), with or without a whip lead, and is rated 250 A at 60% duty cycle above water. It has an electrode guide-slot for fitting electrodes in poor visibility.

Nautilus “Flip-Up” welding lens visor — made from polyformaldehyde (POM), fits all KM hats and helmets, covers the whole faceplate so arc deflection cannot bounce back inside the helmet, and flips up with a thumb even in thick gloves.

Nautilus auto-darkening welding filter — arc-powered, no batteries, shades #8–12 (EN 175/EN 379) with a #2–3 background filter, fully waterproof, two-year guarantee.

Firefly safety switch — a 400 A DC safety/monitor and control switch that sits between the power source and the diver. The standard utility-case model is housed in a Nanuk 915 case (391 × 310 × 173 mm, about 5.5 kg) with amp and volt meters, open-circuit-voltage readout and a live-circuit indicator lamp. A Junior version without meters is announced for cutting work. Weldcraft-Pro points users to IMCA D045, Code of practice for safe use of electricity underwater. The switches carry a 100% 400 A duty-cycle push/pull switch meeting CE directives, UL and CSA approvals, DINSE-style panel plugs and sockets as standard, and a 12-month return-to-base warranty.

Separate from the diving side, David Keats is an accredited Zurich Engineering Risk Services welding surveyor and can act as official witness for permanent joining processes. He writes and develops welding procedures to BS EN ISO 15607, 15609-1 and -2, 15614-1 and -2, ASME IX, CAA Chapter A8-10, BS EN ISO 9606-1 and -2, BS 4872-1 and -2, and BS EN ISO 14732. He is registered with the Steel Construction Certification Scheme as a Responsible Welding Coordinator (RWC) to execution class 4 and below, and advises on CE marking and BS EN 1090-1 compliance. NDT inspection services offered include visual, MPI and dye penetrant.

David J. Keats started welding in 1975 and qualified as an HSE Part 1 commercial diver in 1983, working wet and dry hyperbaric welding operations in the North Sea, the Middle and Far East and UK civil engineering. He founded Hydromech Technical Services in 1987, introduced the UK's first national qualification in underwater welding in 1991 through the Marine & Engineering Training Association, took his welding engineering diploma from TWI in 1992, opened the AMTC Underwater Centre in Perth, Western Australia in 1998, qualified as a CSWIP Senior Welding Inspector in 2000 and founded Speciality Welds Ltd in 2002. He joined the BSI/ISO underwater welding committee in 2003, won the DTI Smart Award the same year for the Hammerhead wet-spot welding process, and the Subsea Achievement Award for Innovation in 2007.

He is the author of two books: The Professional Divers Manual on Wet Welding (Woodhead, 1990) and Underwater Wet Welding – A Welder's Mate (Troubador, 2004), the latter now in a 2023 edition — over 300 pages and 200 illustrations covering equipment, health and safety, welding parameters, electrodes, metallurgy, heat treatments, QA/QC, practical exercises and mock exam questions. Products he designed over his subsea career include the Barracuda Gold electrode, the patented Hammerhead wet-spot welding system (GB 2397790), the Piranha welding and cutting safety control system and the Stinger.