Weld Wednesday w/ AWS Welder to CWI Making the Leap Without Loosing Your Identity

November 5, 2025·44 min·4 clips

A 20-year-old floor sweeper was suddenly handed a welding torch and told to start stringers.

Eric Cunningham came up through the shop. He starts on the south side of Chicago, sweeping floors at Meyer Tool when he was 15 and following people around so he could learn. College did not fit. Working with his hands did, and assembly testing and weldment work gave him a way into welding. The leap was not shiny. It sounds like being useful, staying near the work, and saying yes when the shop needed help. Jason frames the move as an identity problem: how does a welder become a CWI without turning into someone the welders do not trust? Eric keeps the answer practical. A bad weld does not vanish because another pass covers it, and cranking up the heat is not a fix. Cut the problem out early. That is the lesson behind the slag, the x-ray results, and the tungsten inclusion example. Inspection strips the excuses away. Once RT shows what is inside the weld, confidence and pride have to deal with the film. Mentorship runs under the whole conversation. Eric talks about a mentor who came from welding and body shop work, thought he knew plenty, then got humbled and kept grinding. That gives the inspection talk some weight. This is not a clipboard stranger lecturing the shop. It is a welder who learned under pressure and moved into CWI work. By the end, Eric still sounds like a shop guy from the south side of Chicago, looking for people with serious experience who can actually do the work.

As heard by us

A shop-floor story about moving from welding into inspection without losing the hands-on feel that drew him in.

Eric Cunningham's path starts at Meyer Tool Manufacturing in Oak Lawn on Chicago's south side, where he is 15 and sweeping floors, picking up scrap, and later testing weldments before the shop lets him try welding.

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