Overview
Rafi Ahmad Baig is a Senior Engineer on the mechanical and fatigue benches at TCR Engineering's Mahape laboratory. He runs and reviews tensile, impact, hardness, micro-hardness and fatigue testing on metals, castings and welds, and he finalises the test reports those benches issue under the laboratory's NABL ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation.
Background and experience
He holds an M.Tech in Production and Industrial Engineering from Integral University, Lucknow, and a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, Lucknow. His postgraduate project analysed TIG welding defects in mild steel, which is the same question a weld arriving at the mechanical bench usually asks: whether the joint or the parent metal governs, and whether the specimen was taken where the method says it should be.
- Qualifications: M.Tech in Production and Industrial Engineering, Integral University Lucknow, and B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University.
- Postgraduate project: TIG welding defects in mild steel.
- Mechanical bench: tensile at room and elevated temperature for yield, tensile strength, elongation and reduction of area; bend and flattening; Charpy V-notch impact including sub-zero work.
- Before the frame is loaded: specimen geometry, orientation, gauge length, surface finish and machining tolerance checked against the standard and the customer specification.
- Report finalisation: raw data collation, calculated results, units and significant figures, and confirmation that the method and edition cited are the ones actually run.
- Tools: AutoCAD 2D for specimen and fixture drawings; Excel and Word for calculation sheets and report templates.
The benches he works across cover the destructive half of a materials qualification. Mechanical testing at room and elevated temperature: tensile with yield, tensile strength, elongation and reduction of area; bend and flattening; Charpy V-notch impact, including sub-zero work where the specification calls for it; and hardness by Brinell, Vickers, Rockwell and micro-hardness traverse. Fatigue and fracture toughness: axial and rotating-bend programmes, low-cycle and high-cycle, where a single test can occupy a frame for days and a misaligned specimen wastes all of it.
Most of a mechanical result is decided before the frame is loaded. Specimen geometry, orientation, gauge length, surface finish and the machining tolerance the method permits are checked against the standard and the customer specification first, because a specimen cut to a drawing that does not match the standard the specification calls up is the commonest reason a test is rejected and repeated. The machine shop cuts to the standard for that reason, and he works to the same rule at the bench.
Report finalisation is the other half of the role and the half the client sees. He collates the raw data off the frames, checks the calculated results, the units and the significant figures, confirms that the method and the edition cited on the report are the ones actually run, reconciles the result against the acceptance criteria in the customer specification, and closes the report for signature. Under ISO/IEC 17025 a result is not a number on a screen: it is a traceable statement, and the report is where the traceability either holds or does not.
He works in AutoCAD 2D for specimen and fixture drawings, and in Excel and Word for the calculation sheets and report templates the bench runs on.
The rest of the bench
The TCR bench runs to 28 named leaders across TCR Engineering, TCR Advanced and the group functions, and every one of them is on record with their role, their credentials and the work they sign for.
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