Essentially a welding machine is the power supply for a commercial divers welding equipment. The welding power supply is the most expensive part of underwater welding equipment. The good news is whether working as a standard employee or a private contractor, a majority of the time, commercial divers work for companies with at least one ship dedicated to housing the appropriate equipment, including the power supply.

While there are many different power types for welding machines, each suited to their own purpose, none are specific to underwater welding. In many cases, commercial divers must make minor modifications to topside welding machines to make them safe and suitable to aquatic environments.

All that power from the machine needs to be made useable. The machine’s current is transferred through the leads and into an electrode to accomplish this. Stingers are the compact, handheld pieces of welding equipment that firmly grip the electrodes giving commercial divers control over the welding arc. Stingers get manufactured in many different grips for individual comfort and varied amperage ratings suitable to various projects. Underwater welding stingers are less commonly manufactured than topside stingers because they require significant testing and research before being considered safe for aquatic environments. While topside welders have many more stinger types to choose from, most commercial divers use “twist-style” stingers with thick insulation.

Commercial Divers should pay close attention to how strong and easily removable the parts for their stingers are since they receive the most wear and sometimes need quick service in low visibility environments.

An electrode, sometimes referred to as a rod due to its shape, is the part of the welding equipment that conducts electric current and binds two pieces of material together. Electrodes can be consumable, meaning they melt and become part of the weld binding itself, as in the case of gas or shielded metal arc welding. Electrodes can also be non-consumable, meaning they do not melt, such as in gas tungsten arc welding. Electrodes that work underwater need to be refined differently from topside welding electrodes. For safety and efficiency purposes, it’s essential to only use these specifically manufactured electrodes when wet welding.

Underwater welding electrodes get marked with ratings in tensile strength, yield strength, elongation, and amperage.

• • Tensile Strength- this rating tells the user how well the electrodes hold up during the welding process. It’s expressed in PSI or KSI on electrode boxes with their first two numbers. For instance, a rating of 30 means that its tensile strength is rated 30,000 psi. The higher the tensile strength, the more robust and reliable the electrode

• • Yield Strength- Yield strength measures how much material the electrode will produce per millimeter, also expressed in PSI or KSI. The higher the number, the more efficient the electrode burns.

• • Elongation- This rating measures how far the length of the electrode extends under high-stress conditions, measured in percentages.

• • Amperage Rating – This rating is essential for safety reasons. This rating must match the power of the welding machine you’re using. Explosive reactions will occur if this does not match your machine’s rating.

Underwater welding equipment is one of the most frequently utilized toolsets in a commercial diver’s arsenal. At Professional Diver Training Center, we train commercial divers for the real world, with real underwater welding equipment and real-life scenarios prepared by veterans of the military and commercial diving industries. Dive in, and start your journey into commercial diving today.

Want to see more tools of the trade? Part 3 of the Commercial Diving Tools Series is coming soon!

You’re interested in becoming a commercial diver. You’ve already read up on the basic equipment you’ll be using like helmets, wetsuits, gloves, and boots, but what about the bigger, heavier equipment like power tools? It might surprise you to learn that there are underwater versions for many of the power tools you might already be familiar with. Commercial divers perform a wide range of functions in their many differing career paths and so utilize a wide range of tools along the way. Join us in part one of our Commercial Diving Tools Series where we’ll introduce you to the drills, wrenches, grinders, and even chain saws that commercial divers rely on every day. Let’s dive in!

Much like standard tools have different types of power sources (hand, pneumatic, corded, and battery), underwater tools have their own types of power variations. Hydraulics tools rely on fluid power, are bulky and the most powerful, Pneumatic tools use gas, like compressed air, to operate and tend to be less powerful, and with recent advances in technology, you can now in some cases choose battery-powered equipment which is lightweight and convenient but also the least powerful of the three options.  

Just like their above water analogs, these tools are a staple on the job site. Underwater impact drivers use the rotational force of standard drills and add bursts of impacts like a hammer drill to install or remove any shank-styled fasteners in underwater environments. These tools are used across the board but can be more frequently seen in salvage, repair, and offshore commercial diving.

Angle grinders utilize high torque and high speed to rotate a small disc to cut, grind, polish, sharpen, and clean a wide variety of metals and stones. They can also be outfitted to clean, buff, and polish unkempt structures or remove unwanted debris from marine vessels. These tools are also frequently used for jobs like cutting chains, trimming various pipeline fittings, and more. Although salvage, rescue, offshore and inland divers may use these tools more frequently, most fields of commercial diving utilize these tools fairly frequently in some capacity or another.

These tools apply short bursts of powerful twisting and pushing motions. Whether it be a lug nut put on too tightly or a rusted-on, stripped-out bolt, impact wrenches help bring additional, reliable force and grip to the most important or problematic of hex-shaped fasteners. Like impact drivers, underwater impact wrenches are used across most fields of commercial diving.

Some saws only cut when moving in one direction. These conveniently lightweight saws cut anytime their blades are in motion making them extremely efficient. They can be adjusted to angle anywhere from 45 to 90 degrees and the depth of cut can also be adjusted. This versatility gives it a clear advantage when precise cuts need to be made in small spaces. Blades are interchangeable and allow commercial divers to cut many natural and man-made materials found in a wide range of underwater environments. When made for use in commercial diving, these tools are typically hydraulic and play a critical role in repair, salvage, and infrastructure work.

Commercial divers use this powerful motor-driven spinning chain of saw blades to cut through the hardest of underwater mediums. Dense wood, concrete, brick, and steel are a few of the many materials that require the use of one of the most powerful pieces of personal underwater equipment. The use of underwater chainsaws comes in a variety of underwater environments with variable degrees of visibility. While these tools are the most eye-catching and alluring for many prospective commercial divers, it’s important to understand that it is imperative to utilize proper safety and handling when required to use these for long periods in potentially low visibility environments. Inland, salvage, and offshore commercial divers use these most frequently, while rescue and public safety may use them in their own capacities as well.

When faced daily with exciting, new, and challenging tasks in such a fast-growing career field, it’s important that commercial divers are well educated, practiced, and safe when using these many different types of underwater power tools. At Professional Diver Training Center, we train commercial divers for the real world, with real tools, and real scenarios prepared by veterans of the military and commercial diving industries. Take the dive, and start your journey into commercial diving today.        

Want to see more tools of the trade? Part 2 of the Commercial Diving Tools Series is coming soon!

industry has had an average growth of roughly 3 percent per year in both the private and public sectors. That means that since 2004 alone, the demand for commercial divers has more than doubled. What’s more, this trend shows no signs of slowing down. That growth is expected to continue to increase 17 percent over the next 8 years, with an expected 700 new jobs filled by 2030.

If you’re interested in becoming part of this fast-paced, steadily growing, and competitive paying industry, then stay tuned. Professional Diver Training Center is owned and operated by veterans of both the military and Commercial Diving Industries with over 130+ years of experience and we want you to know the truth about what makes a successful commercial diver. While we currently only offer our engineer diver training program to qualified applicants, we are in the process of getting certified by the state of Texas to teach you the ins and outs of the commercial diving industry. Our training course exceeds the expectations and requirements of the ADCI and will help you stand out from your peers. Check back soon!

Engineer divers who are great at their jobs ask questions like, “Why is this defect occurring? What could be the cause? Is the defect going to get worse?” and, most importantly, “What can be done to correct the issue?”. One of the strongest incentives of pursuing this career is that the structures and responsibilities frequently change, making every day feel fresh, new, and exciting. This career may be even more difficult than other types of engineering jobs, but for those who thrive on physically challenging work and want to grow their earning potential, this career path is a great fit.

how can you become an engineer diver?

The great news is if you’re looking to take your engineering degree to the next level, many engineers already working in marine-based industries can have their continuing education sponsored by their current employers. The incentive for sponsoring current employees is easily recognizable, they are already well-informed on the company culture, policies, and procedures which greatly reduces the difficulties associated with onboarding new hires unfamiliar with any or all of these.

Professional Diver Training Center is a perfect fit for those seeking employer-sponsored training. With over 130 years of combined experience in the Navy and Commercial Diving Industry, we focus on training engineer divers to be knowledgeable, competent, and safe for this unique and exciting field. Check out our Engineer Diver course to grow your skills and earning potential today.

While this list touches on some of our favorite commercial diving wetsuits for 2021, we know that different suits do better in different environments. We want to know what you think of our picks and what your favorite wetsuit is. Let us know in the comments below!

2. You Must Have Situational Awareness.

Successful commercial divers need to be able to build a mental picture of their surroundings. Often, your field of vision, depth perception, and lighting are limited. Understanding for instance, where you’ve come, where you’re currently facing, where the crane is coming from, the location of the tool basket will affect your ability to successfully complete tasks in the water and contribute to your safety.

4. You Must Be Proactive

Always be the first person willing to get their hands dirty. Approach everything with a can-do attitude, have your tools ready to go, and make sure you’re dressed in your dive gear and ready to jump in before even being asked. It’s just professional.

6. Safety, Safety, Safety, Safety.

Safety must be on your mind at all times. Think safety in every corner and in dealing with any and every aspect of the job. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of employers and divers out there cutting corners. Thankfully, the industry is slowly moving towards a more safety-focused culture but ultimately, it’s up to you to look after number one. Make sure that you go home with all your fingers and toes, look after your crew and be sure to question everything. If it’s against best practices and is unsafe, don’t do it.

8. Be Friendly.

Being friendly creates a strong team bond and that team bond is extremely valuable offshore. You don’t have to be friends with everybody, but you do need to build an element of camaraderie. These are the people that are going to be rescuing you or your support crew if things go wrong, so it’s important that you’re all on the same level. The better you get along with the crew, the more efficient your team will be. And the best thing about being friendly is you’ll make some good friends along the way.

10. Stay Fit and Healthy.

If you’ve ever tried to complete a task but don’t have the right tool for the job, it can be near, if not entirely impossible. Commercial Diver’s bodies are probably their most important tool other than their brains. If you’re swimming mid-water and carrying heavy tools to a job, it might be 100 meters away. If you’re finning, finning, and finning against the tide all while pulling your umbilical along. In this situation, your fitness might be the key ingredient to either completing the journey successfully or getting yourself into some serious trouble. Being out of breath in a dive helmet is the equivalent of slowly suffocating and nobody wants that.

These ten tips are critical to your continued success in the commercial diving industry. If you pay close attention and absorb these concepts, you’ll be equipped with knowledge and ideas typically only industry pros have under their belts. We want to thank Commercial Diving FAQ for partnering with us to bring this list to you. Check out their YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for more great content.

The SuperLite® 17B Commercial Diver’s Helmet was introduced in 1975. It was the culmination of all the years of testing and alterations by Kirby Morgan. This helmet set the working standard for the commercial diving industry worldwide for many years. Many thousands of underwater hours have proved the design to be dependable, comfortable, and extremely safe. The 17 continues to be the most widely used commercial diving helmet in the World. Check out the newest version of this helmet here.

In large part, the success of these and other Kirby Morgan helmets has to do with their consistent ability to listen to the needs of commercial divers in the field. Constant input from them, their partners in the military, and public service/safety divers has kept Kirby Morgan products at the cutting edge. When employers and employees buy and use Kirby Morgan products, they are backed by years of experience and thousands of hours in the field.

Having a company built by someone who knew the challenges he and his peers faced, Bev Morgan built a corporate culture centered around one of the most important core values: the ability to listen. It is with this input, and their constant striving to engineer the most comfortable and reliable helmets in the industry that Kirby Morgan remains a company with no true equal in the field.

There are no training standards for most construction workers, they don’t have to graduate from anywhere to start and many join crews with little or absolutely no experience or training. Over 55% of construction workers believe they should have more safety training. The good news is since OSHA started increasing safety regulations in this industry, worker deaths in America are down on average, from about 38 worker deaths a day in 1970 to 15 a day in 2019. If we compare this to the fact that, when last studied, there were roughly 6 to 13 diving fatalities a year in the commercial diving industry, and account for the strides made to the safety standards since, we can see that the perceived danger levels are somewhat diminished.

Decompression Sickness:

Commercial divers frequently use nitrox, or mixed gases for breathing, especially when working deep underwater. Decompression sickness happens when gas bubbles from the special mixes end up forming inside the body. Although it’s a natural process, these gases can expand when divers come back to the surface causing joint pain and rashes or in extreme cases paralysis and even death. It’s a real danger to all divers.

Fortunately, dive operators have tools on hand to prevent decompression sickness and there are strict safety protocols and procedures divers can follow to avoid D.C.S. Follow these rules, policies, and procedures to the letter every time, and the risk of getting D.C.S reduces dramatically.

Oxygen Deprivation:

Sometimes commercial divers use tanks, and sometimes when on deeper dives, they can use surface lines that run hundreds of meters. Under certain conditions, these lines may get pinched.

To prevent the diver from running out of oxygen when using tanks, divers have backups for their main systems. Standard diving bells have several gas backup systems to use should their main one fail. The dive team’s backup diver is also trained to react at a moment’s notice to bring down a backup gas umbilical should the main diver need it.

In the case of tangled wires begin a controlled ascent to the surface, remembering to exhale as you go. Activate an audible signal (e.g., bang on your tank with a knife) or bring your situation to the attention of other nearby divers.

Nitrogen Narcosis:

Below 100 feet, high-pressure conditions can cause certain gasses to have intoxicating effects. When the effects are mild, divers may feel slightly inebriated, but when severe divers can become paralyzed or lose consciousness causing them to run out of air and consequently drown.

Reducing the risk of this condition can be simple in certain scenarios. Divers experiencing nitrogen narcosis must calmly ascend to lower depths where the effects are reversed. For divers below 190 feet, this is avoided entirely by using a blend of oxygen, nitrogen, and helium, also known as trimix.

Unsafe Company Cultures:

Kyla Richter was a diving supervisor who saw that many companies were claiming that a lack of diver experience was the primary factor in underwater welding deaths. She randomized a sample of 40 fatalities from a report published by The Divers Association, an organization that fights for the improvement of commercial diving safety standards worldwide, and found the average age of the diver was 37. She concluded that if welders who had been working in the field for up to 15 years were the ones dying, it wasn’t due to the diver’s lack of experience. She inferred that “companies are getting away with poor safety measures and investigations need some serious revision if they really mean to improve conditions for employees and not protect the interests of the company. Find her full report here.

With these things in mind, it’s good to acknowledge the truth about the dangers inherent to commercial diving. Divers who work long-term in the industry know the importance of strictly following all safety protocols, staying calm, and being able to identify unsafe company cultures. Veterans of the industry place high-quality training at the top of their list of priorities. They have real-world experience that can help you prepare for and identify potential hazards for yourself and others before they turn into life-threatening emergencies. If you train hard, follow all safety protocols, stay calm, and know how to identify and avoid unsafe situations, there’s no reason why you too can’t have a long, fulfilling career in this exciting, fast-growing industry.

The first thing you’ll notice with these job descriptions is the variety of responsibilities you’ll be expected to undertake. A Dive Tender is a member of the topside crew who works closely with the main diver.  Before the dive even starts, the tender checks the diver’s equipment and topside air supply to make sure it’s fully functional and operating efficiently. After dressing the diver and helping them into the water, their sole focus becomes vigilantly tending to the diver’s safety. They must check the lines and eliminate any excess slack or tension, exchange line-pull signals with the diver, 

keep the Diving Supervisor informed of the line-pull signals and amountof diving hose/tending line over the side, all while remaining alert for any signs of an accident or emergency. Add to this list the need to know every possible way the dive can go wrong and have a few backup plans in place, you’ve got quite a list of responsibilities. The point of all this, if not at first apparent, becomes clearer when viewing this job as a long-term career as opposed to a short-term means to a financial end. If you want to make it as a commercial diver in the industry then you must:

Becoming a Diver Tender may not be what you had imagined your first year of commercial diving looking like, but it is, in fact, an extremely necessary step. Being a Diver Tender teaches you the ins and outs of the gear, allows you to learn the proper emergency response protocols before they threaten your life, and it breaks down one of the biggest barriers of being the best at your job, an over-inflated ego. With all this in mind, it is easy to see how this small delay in getting that coveted dive time under your belt will actually allow you to be successful as a long-term commercial diver.

Offshore diver:

Offshore diving jobs focus on diving to install or repair underwater structures. Your duties in this career include working to inspect, maintain, or fix the sub-surface parts of oil rigs. Though an offshore diver typically works in the oil and gas industry, you can also perform diving responsibilities in other sectors, such as shipping. You can also repair offshore structures, such as bridges, cables, and pipelines, working with equipment like welding tools, saws, etc.

Inland diver:

Inland divers work in rivers, lakes, Intracoastal waterways, and above-ground water tanks. They perform a variety of work including construction, inspection, and repair of underwater bridge components, piers, water treatment facilities, and hydroelectric dams. They may act as hazmat divers, underwater welders, and salvage divers.

Hazmat diver:

These divers work in known hazardous environments. These environments may be contaminated by hazardous materials, the diving medium may be inherently a hazardous material, or the environments in which the diving medium is situated may include hazardous materials with a significant risk of exposure to the diver. Special precautions, equipment, and procedures are associated with hazmat diving.

Underwater welder:

Underwater or offshore welders combine commercial diving qualifications with welding skills normally performed on dry land. Underwater welders must be able to handle bulky equipment specially designed for this job while working in a hazardous environment.

Salvage diver:

Diving work is associated with the recovery of all or part of ships, their cargoes, aircraft, and other vehicles and structures which have sunk or fallen into the water. In the case of ships, it may also refer to repair work done to make an abandoned or distressed but still floating vessel more suitable for towing or propulsion under its own power.

Inspection diver:

When ships, oil rigs, bridges, and other structures are underwater for long periods, rust and numerous other deteriorators can make them hazardous. Inspection divers are tasked with surveying these structures and relaying their conditions to the topside crew, noting where repairs are required to ensure all relevant codes and safety regulations are met.

Media diver:

Media divers perform underwater filming and photography. They usually work for movie and television companies. They must be trained camera operators and are responsible for planning, researching, preparing equipment, and capturing the shot.

Scientific diver:

Most scientific divers work for larger organizations that engage in underwater research and application. They are trained to use unique instruments for conducting underwater experiments and sample taking. Some scientific diving is carried out by universities in support of undergraduate or postgraduate research programs, and government bodies such as the United States Environmental Protection to recover samples of water, marine organisms, and sea, lake, or riverbed material to examine for signs of pollution.

Public Safety Diver:

Divers who perform underwater rescue, underwater recovery, and underwater investigation conducted by divers working for or under the authority of municipal, state, or federal agencies. These divers are typically members of police departments, sheriff’s offices, fire rescue agencies, search and rescue teams, or providers of emergency medical services. Public Safety Divers (PSDs) can be paid by the previously mentioned agencies or be non-paid volunteers.

Aquarium Divers:

These divers clean tanks, track the health of aquarium plant and animal life, carry out underwater maintenance activities, and sometimes perform in shows to feed sharks, swim with dolphins, etc. Although many of these jobs are in zoos and aquariums, large hotels and casinos that showcase tanks and water features like marine shows, fountains, or dolphin enclosures frequently hire these divers as well.

This list, while comprehensive, is still far from the many ways a commercial diver may apply their skills to different jobs and industries. The need for commercial divers across different sectors is growing and workers with this specialized training are being hired daily. Whether it’s an offshore or onshore job, you can be sure that every day will feel new and exciting. So, what are you waiting for? Commercial Diving is your start to a more exciting future.