【Petrochemical Legend】Wang Zhaojun: The “International Welding King” in an Ordinary Position”
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Wang Zhaojun is a welder at the Fourth Engineering Department of the Installation Company of Daqing Oilfield Engineering Construction Company. Since starting work in 2002, he has won numerous awards; in September 2011, he achieved first place in a single-event competition at the 2011 \"JACK Cup\" International Young Welders Competition in Lüneburg, Germany, which earned him the title of \"International Welding King\". When he first started working, lacking practical experience, Wang Zhaojun often suffered eye injuries from arcs, and it was common for his arms to develop large blisters from welding sparks; his palms, which held the welding gun, also developed thick layers of hard calluses. To improve his wrist and squatting skills, he used pliers as welding torches, holding pieces of scrap weighing over ten pounds and squatting for half an hour at a time; he even ate while squatting. Sometimes at midnight in the evening, the pain wakes me up; I can’t fall back asleep, so I lie in bed and move my limbs around, using both my hands and feet to practice. In this way, he gradually learned various welding positions such as lying down, standing, lying on his side, and lying on his back, and also mastered various welding techniques including TIG welding, CO2 gas shielded welding, and manual arc welding.
In November 2006, Wang Zhaojun was recommended to participate in the National Welding Competition for the engineering construction sector. As a result, I came in fourth place due to poor theoretical scores. So, he began to intensively study the theory on his own and completed the courses in welding technology and automation at Daqing Vocational College through self-study. In 2011, he was admitted to the undergraduate program in Metal Materials Engineering through the adult college entrance examination at Northeast Petroleum University, becoming a worker with a bachelor’s degree.
Wang Zhaojun is a member of the third generation of oil workers who grew up under the influence of the Daqing Spirit and the Iron Man Spirit; the spirit of oil workers, characterized by their determination to be the first and to strive to achieve their goals, has always inspired him. In 2012, the installation company named Wang Zhaojun’s team “The Sharp Knife” after him, a team dedicated to taking on difficult, challenging, risky, and urgent construction tasks. In November 2014, Wang Zhaojun led the elite team to assist with the preparatory construction work at the Zhongshiliu Transfer Oil and Water Discharge Station prior to its commissioning. The task is extremely urgent, and the involved processes are quite complex; if the 38 connections cannot be completed within 12 hours, the pipelines in the three nearby measurement rooms could freeze and crack! The pipelines on site are intricate, and the working space is extremely limited; it’s not even possible to move around inside, let alone carry out any work! With temperatures below minus 20 degrees, even wearing the thickest work clothes, one gets completely frozen after standing for a while. Wang Zhaojun remained calm and said, \"Emergency welding means racing against time; by using the techniques of hand welding and low-current rapid welding, and by applying both methods simultaneously, it’s possible to ensure welding quality while also reducing the time required. Let’s get to work!\" ” Due to water returning from beneath the surface, he and his team members worked in waders, welding in ice water that reached up to their knees; when the angle was unfavorable, they had to weld with their heads pressed against the ice surface. Soon, my feet turned numb, and my fingers could no longer be bent. With the last weld spark extinguished, all welds were completed perfectly, and the first-inspection pass rate reached 98%! It was completed 3 whole hours earlier than expected!
Over his 14 years in the industry, Wang Zhaojun has been involved in the construction of more than 30 key projects at the national and provincial/municipal levels, including the renovation project for the NanSan Oil Depot to handle Russian crude oil, as well as the Mohe-Daqing section of the China-Russia crude oil pipeline. Eight of these projects have been awarded the title of National Municipal Gold Cup Model Projects. In 2012, Daqing Oilfield Company established the “Wang Zhaojun Model Worker Innovation Studio”. In the studio, he led everyone in studying construction challenges, overcoming technical barriers, and learning welding theory. Based on his own practical methods and experience in competitions, he developed the \"Six Precisions and Six Stabilities\" welding technique as well as the \"Five-Step Training Method\" to help young workers improve their skills. The young workers he trained have won awards in international competitions.
Since the establishment of the Model Worker Innovation Studio, significant achievements have been made in technological innovation. Welding with a tungsten inert gas arc welder has been widely used in on-site construction projects. However, with the traditional \"scratch initiation method,\" if the operation is not performed properly, the tungsten electrode can easily break and remain inside the weld seam. To address this common problem, he and the key members of his team conducted numerous experiments and invented the \"wire arc starting method.\" This method not only reduced the wear rate of tungsten electrodes, extending their service life by 1.5 times, but also saved labor time and reduced costs, while ensuring the quality of the work. In 2012, this method was rolled out across the engineering department where the teams were located; on the Junan I-2 project, costs were saved by 500,000 yuan alone for tungsten electrodes. Over the four years since the team was established, Wang Zhaojun has invented 13 technological innovations, saving the company tens of millions in costs in total. In 2015 alone, 4 innovations were invented: a flange separator, a welding multi-angle fixture, a boss alignment tool, and a portable ring-type pipeline welding electrode. Today, 33-year-old Wang Zhaojun spends his days either working on site or receiving training at the base. Although he bears the title of International Welding King, he continues to work at his ordinary post as before. He said, “I can only achieve new results by starting from scratch.” ”He has received numerous honors, and the team he led was named one of the Top 50 Teams for Excellent Implementation of Corporate Culture at the grassroots level in China in 2014. In August 2015, Wang Zhaojun’s Model Worker Innovation Studio was recognized as a Sinopec Group Skills Expert Studio.