Jim- Peter Hearn in Danbury Ct. area teaches TDI class.
Not necessarily a scuba agency but they do provide a cert. PSI-PCI ?
- Thread starter Jim Lapenta
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Wookie
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At DEMA it was Bill. My original training (and ya made me dig out my 18-year-old certificate) - I can't say. The certificate has Bill's name on it, but he definitely wasn't the instructor. Neither Dale nor Mark sounds right, but I'm really not sure. I do remember taking lots of notes, wishing there was more time, and being amazed that there was so much more to the subject matter than I had realized. Whoever the instructor was, he was great. I did not feel sold to - and I'm somewhat overly sensitive to that type of thing.
My impression is that PSI has spent the resources to compile the course. Then the other agincy takes PSI's material and writes thier course. None can prove where they did or did not get thier info for the course material since it all is available from the government. Sothe real beef is that you are spending say a mil on staff updating course material on a daily basis and someone takes you student guide and writes a course based on that. Now PSI is about to put the newest version of thier course out shortly to update the course materials for all new regs ect that has come to pass since the last revision. There is a lot of legal fees involved on PSI's part to insure content is proper ect. The "THEY now ets it for free. I dont hink PSI has a problem with any agency having a similar course but they want them to develope thier course themselves. Then there is the aspect that regs say that ONLY PSI certified inspectors are authorized to conduct certain protocols on certain tanks/vessels. When the "they" people try to get included in the ALLOWED catagory to grow thier market share by using the repackaged product of PSI, PSI has a right to raise a fuss about that. It is my understanding that this is what is happening. PSI forces you to recert on your PSI taining every 3 years, per govt regs, and other agaencies do not. So for instance some tanks are allowed to be inspected by manufacturer or PSI inspectors only. The "THEYS are trying to get a piece of that market.
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What tanks are you talking about? You don't need any certification to do a visual inspection. I've taken the PSI course and the TDI course. The TDI course was better because the instructor was better. I was allowed to use my PSI book (which I purchased) in my TDI course.
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Not all inspected pressure vessels are for scuba, and scuba is only a small part (any more) of PSI/PCI's business. They have made their fortune by being proactive to government needs and moving beyond the realm of scuba and fire department tank monkeys and out into the military and commercial world where anything holding over 40 PSI that goes on the road has to be inspected. PSI/PCI offers accredited (if I can use the term a bit loosely) inspectors, that is, if you have a PSI/PCI cert the government knows where you've been and what you know, kind of like a state board PE, but not as rigorous.
They also do most of the cylinder accident investigation in the western world. Think NTSB for compressed gas cylinders. They do this for governments, because they have more expertise than the folks actually writing the regulations.
The Chairman
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So, for the average Scuba shop: the training is not essential. That's not saying that I don't appreciate shops that go through the training, but how many divers ever ask to see a tank monkey's credentials? I remember the first interaction after I went through PSI's process with instructor #4. The tank monkey looked at my PSI inspection sticker and balked at filling my tank. He demanded to know who did it, and I freely confessed the deed. Then he went on to tell me that I was not qualified to inspect my own cylinders. O rly? So, freshly out of the class, I started to quiz him on when to fail/not fail a cylinder. I was appalled at his lack of knowledge. Then I asked him when he took the class and it turned out that he hadn't. He was shown how to conduct an inspection by the shop manager. WHAT??? The guys who require me to be certified in order to buy gas don't have the proper certs to even inspect the cylinders? I was shocked.
That was more than a dozen years ago, and I'm no longer shocked. We average only two tank explosions a year here in the US. Whatever the shops are doing, it seems to be working!
That was more than a dozen years ago, and I'm no longer shocked. We average only two tank explosions a year here in the US. Whatever the shops are doing, it seems to be working!
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I'm not sure how much tongue in cheek to agree with here. The reason we have a small number of explosions has nothing to do with the shop, in fact, my guess would be that most explosions are directly attributable to poor filling practices. The reason for the small number of explosions would be the intrinsic safety of the system, where cylinders are hydro'd and inspected every 5 years, where most shop owners/managers at least know to change their compressor filters periodically, where cylinders are overdesigned to the point where they are like Betty White's Vagina.
I am a PSI inspector. I have never found a reason to fail any cylinder aside from something I'd done to it myself (I tried to whip DC111 out of a bunch of aluminum cylinders). I didn't condemn them, I found an air only shop perfectly willing to have them in service, and they cylinders were perfectly suited to the job. They are probably still in Texas, diving in a quarry. That's why we don't have more cylinder failures.
There are facts, there is sometimes a logical way to cover them. Anybody saying the same thing will tend to use some of the same words. Writing your own course material, slides, etc., does not mean there will be much difference from what somebody else does from the same public domain resources. I have looked at course material from several scuba agencies for several courses. The differences, if any, tend to be that one will go into more detail on one topic than the other.
I once had a fellow get mad at me because of a technical paper I wrote. He had not solved the problem but said that if he had solved it he would have solved it the same way I did so he should have been mentioned.
I once had a fellow get mad at me because of a technical paper I wrote. He had not solved the problem but said that if he had solved it he would have solved it the same way I did so he should have been mentioned.
BugHunterNY
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Rarely will I ever read something here and think "too far"... But this is close.
. Leave that nice old lady out of this . @Netdoc, can you clarify what you mean by being required to be a tank inspector to get a gas fill? I'm not sure I understand the point you were trying to make?
Thanks!
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