20.3 Procedure Compliance, Reporting, and Acceptance/Rejection

The last Techniques skill on the ASNT NDT Level II specific exam is not another probe angle. It is procedure compliance: do the examination that was written, record what the form requires, accept or reject against the table in front of you, and stop when the system is no longer the system the procedure describes. General Industry and Pressure Equipment both test this. The construction code on the cover page changes; the inspector's duty does not.

A Level II who can recite Snell's law and still signs a traveler after a failed lift test is the candidate the specific paper is written to fail. The 40 items include stems that are almost miniature procedures. The exam is checking whether you will read them.

What the record must contain

The employer's procedure and the applicable method article (ASME Section V Articles 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9; ASTM E1444, E1417, E94, E164; AWS D1.1 when it is invoked) list required entries. ASNT does not publish a secret universal form. Learn the classes of data so any printed form makes sense.

A check-mark in an accept block with no procedure revision, no lift-test line, and no datum is not a record. A photograph of a weld with no identity and no scale is not a record. "Looks like undercut" is not a record. The Level III or the customer must be able to reconstruct the examination without standing next to you.

Record process-control results before the first production interpretation, not after someone questions the call. Back-dating a lift test you skipped is a compliance failure and, on the job, a integrity failure. The exam will not praise the inspector who "remembered" the yoke was fine.

Sketches are how location becomes a fact

When the procedure requires a sketch or a marked-up isometric, the sketch is part of the examination. Words without a picture fail as soon as two toes, two nozzles, or two clock positions exist.

Rules that survive every form:

• Name a datum: weld centerline, a stamped number, a flow arrow, a north mark, a nozzle "0°" aligned to a stated feature, a station or node on the isometric, a tank course and clock position.
• Give distance and direction from that datum ("linear indication 18 mm long, starting 40 mm clockwise from stamp W12 on the downstream toe").
• Show which surface (OD, ID, face, root, clad face, substrate).
• If a photograph is allowed or required, include identity, date, and a scale. A phone picture of "the bad weld" is a souvenir.

Pipe and vessel work almost always uses clock position looking in a stated direction (usually in the direction of flow, or looking upstream — the procedure says which). Structural work uses member marks and distance from a joint. Casting work uses a marked photograph or a numbered view on the technique card. If you cannot tell a second inspector where to put a finger, you have not located the indication.

Accept and reject only against the printed table

Defect is not a feeling. A discontinuity becomes a defect when the named acceptance standard says it does not meet the criteria. The specific exam will often print a miniature table in the stem. That table is the whole universe for that item.

How to apply a printed table:

1. Classify the indication the way the table classifies — linear versus rounded, crack versus incomplete fusion versus porosity, surface versus subsurface if the table uses those words.
2. Measure the dimension the table uses (length, diameter, height, remaining wall). Do not invent a depth VT or PT cannot measure.
3. Compare to the number. Longer than means longer than. Do not round a 5 mm linear indication down to "about 1/8 in" because you wanted to ship the part.
4. Write the disposition and the measurement on the form. If the table is silent on this geometry, you do not invent a line. You hold and notify the Level III.

Worked picture. The item prints: linear indications longer than 1/8 in (3 mm) are rejectable; rounded indications up to 1/8 in are acceptable; cracks are rejectable regardless of length. The Level II measures a 5 mm sharp linear magnetic-particle buildup at a carbon-steel toe. That is linear and longer than 1/8 in — reject (and it is also the picture of a crack, which the table rejects at any length). Recording "accepted, particles often exaggerate" is how a candidate turns a free point into a miss.

Second picture. A radiograph shows a 2 mm rounded indication. The printed table accepts rounded indications to 3 mm. Accept that indication against this table even if last month's vessel used a tighter spec. The exam is testing whether you can switch tables.

When to stop work and notify the Level III

Level II evaluation authority is real and bounded. You interpret and disposition inside the procedure. You do not write a new procedure on the traveler. Stop and notify the Level III (or the person the written practice names) when any of these is true:

• An essential variable cannot be met: the yoke fails the lift test, the part is outside the penetrant temperature band, two-side radiographic access does not exist, the ultrasonic calibration will not hold, VT lighting cannot be brought to the minimum.
• Process control has failed and cannot be restored on the spot (bath out of band, density out of window, IQI not visible, expired cal sticker).
• The procedure is silent, conflicting, or out of revision for this product form or this alloy.
• The indication is outside the scope of the technique (a bond-line question on a weld-only procedure; an austenitic weld on an MT procedure).
• Someone asks you to accept a rejectable indication, skip a hold point, or "use your judgment" instead of the table.
• Safety will not allow the technique (no radiation boundary, confined-space entry not permitted, live equipment).

What you do not escalate is a routine relevant indication the table already tells you how to reject. Measuring a 20 mm crack and applying a "cracks are rejectable" line is Level II work. Calling the Level III because you do not want to be the person who rejects the weld is not a technical stoppage.

Document the stoppage: what failed, what you held, whom you notified, and what instruction you received. Then follow that instruction or the revised procedure. Do not resume on a verbal "it is probably fine" that contradicts the written table.

Noncompliance that voids the examination

Four pictures appear over and over. Treat each as an invalid examination, not as a paperwork scar.

Skipped lift test

An electromagnetic yoke that was not lift-tested at the working spacing is an unverified magnetizing force. ASTM E1444, ASTM E709, and ASME Section V Article 7 commonly require 10 lb (4.5 kg) for AC and 40 lb (18 kg) for DC. If the shift started without that check — or the yoke lifted 8 lb and the Level II "compensated" with more powder — every subsequent magnetic-particle accept is unsupported. Stop. Remove the yoke. Notify the Level III. Re-examine parts that were accepted under the failed system if the procedure or the Level III requires it.

Overwash

Penetrant overwash — water too hot, too hard, too close, or too long; or a solvent hose on Method C — strips penetrant from the discontinuity. The developer then has nothing to draw out. The surface looks beautifully clean. The crack is still there. ASTM E1417-style windows (wash commonly taught near 50–100 °F and ≤40 psi; Type I Method A watched under UV-A and stopped when background is gone) exist to prevent this. An overwashed part is not a negative examination. It is an incomplete process. Reclean and reprocess; do not sign "no relevant indications."

Density out of window

A film radiograph whose optical density through the area of interest sits outside the procedure window (many ASME Section V Article 2 techniques: about 1.8–4.0, with the common 1.8 X-ray / 2.0 gamma minima) is not ready to interpret. Too light, and thin sections and IQI holes disappear. Too dark, and you cannot see them on the viewer. Digital work has the analogous gray-value / SNR window. Do not interpret. Reshoot. A Level II who calls porosity on a 1.2-density film has invented contrast the image does not legally have.

Expired calibration

Ultrasonic (and densitometer, light-meter, and timer) calibrations expire on a date the procedure or the written practice sets. ASNT does not publish a universal interval; do not invent one. An expired UT cal means range, zero, velocity, and sensitivity are no longer demonstrated. A 6 dB drop on the reference hole is not a hint to add gain and keep scanning — it is a stop. Recalibrate on the named block. If the instrument, probe, or wedge is out of official cal, remove it from service. Depth and amplitude numbers collected after expiration do not belong on an accept/reject line.

Other voids in the same family: a fluorescent PT booth at 400 μW/cm² when the procedure requires 1000 μW/cm²-class UV-A; an IQI of the wrong size or on the wrong side; a VT examination done from a distance the procedure forbids; a residual-field check skipped when the next operation is welding.

The 30-day price of not practicing procedure reading

ASNT Certification Services LLC charges a retake of a failed exam at $370 member / $410 nonmember (public Level II fee table as taught in this guide). You also wait 30 days before the retest, and you need a new approval letter. The specific exam is 40 items in 2 hours. A large fraction of those items are Applications and Techniques written as procedure excerpts: a table, an essential-variable list, a report-block requirement, a process-control failure.

That is why this section exists. Candidates fail the specific paper not because they cannot define permeability, but because they will not slow down and apply the printed sentence. They pick the method they use at their shop. They accept an indication the table rejects. They keep shooting when the IQI is gone. They treat a skipped lift test as a missing signature instead of a void examination.

Practice the skill the fee is punishing you for skipping:

1. Read the procedure number and revision in the stem first.
2. Highlight essential variables and the acceptance table.
3. Ask whether the inspector in the stem met those lines.
4. If not, the answer is stop, restore, notify — not "use judgment."

One careful reading of a 12-line technique sheet in the exam lobby is cheaper than 30 days and $370 / $410. Recertification later has the same trap: if you recertify by exam and fail, you cannot fall back to renewal by application. Procedure reading is a career skill, not a first-time-candidate drill.

A compliance walkthrough you can reuse on any stem

Use this sequence on a specific-exam compliance item. It is the same sequence a Level II should use on a real traveler.

1. Identify the part, the method, and the procedure revision. If the revision does not cover this alloy or this product form, stop.
2. Verify process control that the method requires today: lift test, lighting, bath, density and IQI, UT cal, VT distance. Any fail → stop and notify.
3. Run the named technique, not a cousin technique. No silent AC-to-DC, Method C-to-hose, SOD-walk-in, 70°-to-45°, flashlight VT.
4. Record identity, equipment, process control, and either "no relevant indications" or a full indication line.
5. Sketch to a datum when the procedure or the indication's location requires it.
6. Apply only the printed acceptance table. Hold when the table is silent.
7. Sign only what you did. Do not sign a hold point for a test that was not performed.

Applications chose the method. Techniques froze the variables. Compliance is how a Level II proves both actually happened. That is the specific exam's last question, and it is the one that keeps a $740 / $820 initial package from turning into a 30-day retake.