Record an inspection result

This guide covers the core inspector flow: recording the outcome of an inspection so the weld’s status reflects what actually happened.

Before you start

• You need permission to record inspections on the project (ask your admin if Record result doesn’t appear for you).
• Know the ISO and weld number you’re recording a result for — weld numbers repeat across different ISOs, so the ISO is what tells you which weld is actually yours — and whether it already has an open inspection.

Find or start the inspection

1. Open Welds and find the weld, then select its Inspections action — or open Inspections from the navigation to see every inspection on the project.

   On the Inspections screen each row carries the identifiers you work from: an ISO column (the drawing number, which opens that ISO) and a Weld column (the weld number). The Search ISO, weld, chart… box matches on the ISO drawing number and the weld number as well as an inspection’s chart, tech, and description — so you can type a drawing number or a weld number straight in and get the inspections on it. Search covers every inspection you have access to, not just the page you’re looking at, and the row count reflects everything that matched — it never widens what you can see, so a colleague with different access may get a different count for the same term. Both identifiers are also carried into the screen’s export.

2. If the weld doesn’t have an inspection yet, select New inspection and fill in:

   • Inspection type (required)
   • NDE contractor (optional)
   • NDE technician (optional — enabled once a contractor is chosen)
   • Inspection date (optional)

   Save, and the inspection is created with status Unreviewed.

About the inspection type

The inspection type is the NDE method the inspection records — radiographic (RT), ultrasonic (UT), visual (VT), heat treatment, and so on. It is what the NDE complete breakdown on an ISO counts, and on a radiographic type it is what tells MaxTrax to show you the radiograph log.

• The picker offers only active types. If your administrator retires a type, it stops being offered for new inspections and stops appearing as a filter on the Inspections screen.
• Inspections already recorded under a retired type keep showing their real type — on the inspection’s own detail, in the per-weld inspection list, in the weld drawer, on the ISO’s NDE complete breakdown, and on sampling coverage. Your historical record is never relabelled, and a retired radiographic type still shows its radiograph log.
• If a type genuinely cannot be found, MaxTrax says so plainly — you see a marker such as #12 (unknown) in place of the name, never a blank and never a guessed label. On an ISO’s NDE complete sub-line the breakdown reads NDE breakdown unavailable rather than quietly disappearing, because a partial breakdown would understate the real counts.

About the NDE contractor and technician

Both are optional, and leaving the contractor empty is itself meaningful: an inspection with no contractor is one that has not been requested yet, which is what puts it on the Ready to request lens. So MaxTrax is careful to distinguish “nobody recorded” from “recorded, but we cannot name them”.

• The pickers offer only active parties. If your administrator retires a contractor or a technician, they stop being offered on New inspection and in the Send NDE request chooser.
• Inspections already assigned to a retired party keep showing that party’s real name — on the inspection’s own detail and in the per-weld inspection list. A request you already sent will not start reading as one you never sent.
• On those two screens, a dash (—) means nobody was recorded. It never means “we could not look them up”.
• If a contractor or technician genuinely cannot be found there, you see a marker such as #12 in place of the name — including when the lookup fails to load. That marker is deliberate: something was recorded, and showing the dash instead would tell you the opposite of the truth.
• Elsewhere in MaxTrax this distinction is not drawn yet. The weld drawer on the weld matrix still shows a dash for a retired technician, the same as for one that was never recorded. Read a dash there as “no technician name to show”, not as “no technician was assigned”.

Record the result

1. Open the inspection and select Record result.

2. The choices are named for what you found. Only the ones that are legal from the inspection’s current state are offered:

   • Accept: records the exam as Passed.
   • Reject — weld defect: records Failed for a real indication in the weld. See What happens next for what that does to the weld.
   • Re-examine — invalid exam: offered only on an inspection that is already Failed. It records Reworked so the same joint gets re-shot. No repair weld is created and the weld’s status does not change. A weld already moved to Rejected stays Rejected, and a repair weld already created is not withdrawn.
   • Awaiting: records Pending. The exam isn’t complete yet.
   • Void exam: records Negated, so the exam no longer counts toward the weld.

   From Unreviewed you can choose Accept, Reject — weld defect, Awaiting or Void exam. From Pending: Accept, Reject — weld defect or Void exam. From Failed: Re-examine — invalid exam or Void exam. From Reworked: Accept or Reject — weld defect. Passed and Negated are final. Once an inspection reaches one of these, no further result can be recorded against it.

3. Read the consequence line under your choice, then save. There’s no separate rejection-reason field. The outcome you pick is the record.

Citing the code edition you inspected under

Recording a result (and revising a WPS — see Welding procedures) offers an optional Cited code edition field: search and pick the code and edition (for example, “ASME B31.3 · 2022”) the disposition was actually made under, then optionally add a Clause / table reference (e.g. 341.3.2). Leaving it blank is always fine — nothing is filled in for you, and MaxTrax never guesses or defaults to “the latest edition” on your behalf.

Once saved, the citation shows as a small chip wherever that inspection appears — on the Inspections list, on the inspection’s own detail, and in a WPS’s revision history. Select the chip to open a read-only popover with the exact code, edition, and clause/table that was recorded — this is a snapshot of what was cited at the time, not a live lookup, so it stays correct even if the code register changes later. A result with nothing cited shows Uncited instead of a chip.

If you pick an edition that isn’t in the register (a leftover from a stale page, for instance), saving is refused with an inline message naming the rejected citation — your other selections (outcome, chart, tech) aren’t lost, so you can just fix the citation and save again.

Filtering the list by a cited edition

The Inspections list has a Cited under filter alongside its other filters: pick a code edition to show only inspections cited under it. A chip appears next to the picker showing what’s applied — select its ✕ to clear just that filter (the other filters you’ve set stay as they are).

What happens next

MaxTrax re-checks the weld’s inspections every time you record a result, under the project’s NDE policy for each exam type:

• If every inspection on the weld has passed, the weld becomes Accepted.
• A Reject — weld defect on a mandatory exam type makes the weld Rejected, and a repair follows.
• A Reject — weld defect on a lot-eligible exam type is recorded as a failed sample, and the weld isn’t moved. A weld is still never Accepted while any of its active inspections is Failed.

The confirmation reports what actually happened. For example, “Reject recorded — weld Rejected; a repair follows.” When the weld’s status didn’t move, it says “Reject recorded — the weld’s status did not change.” This happens for a lot-eligible exam type, and also when the weld was already Rejected. Every result you record is kept, so the inspection history behind a weld’s current status is always there to review.

The weld’s Inspections list shows each inspection’s Disposition next to its result. It reads Reject for a failure on a mandatory exam type and Lot-accepted for a failure on a lot-eligible exam type that the policy tolerated as a sample. Anything else shows a dash. That includes results recorded before dispositions were stamped. An Accepted weld is eligible to roll into its test package. See Complete a weld & test-package sign-off.

Overriding a weld’s status directly

Separately from recording an inspection result, someone with edit access can change a weld’s status directly from Welds, using its Change Status action — Accept, Reject, or Void. This only works while the weld is still Pending, and it doesn’t create or require an inspection — it’s a direct, manual override, distinct from the inspection flow above.

Note

Repair is a terminal weld status, and it isn’t one you set in place. A Rejected weld is repaired by requesting a repair from the weld’s drawer — MaxTrax spawns a new, linked repair weld (the physically new joint, which starts back at Pending) and moves the original weld to Repair. See Repair a weld for the full flow.

Related

• Inspector overview
• Weld status lifecycle — the full state machine behind these outcomes.
• Repair a weld
• Getting started — weld and status vocabulary.
• Welding procedures (WPS) — where a citation also shows up in a WPS’s revision history.
• Field register workflow — the same Cited code edition field in the field’s Record result sheet.