In testing — not on the App Store yet
See what's wrong with your bead.
Lay a bead, put a coin beside it, take one photo. In seconds you get a scored practice card: every defect circled directly on your weld, a score out of 100, and exactly one thing to change on the next pass.
No launch date promised. When it's ready, you'll get one email.
Your bead, with each defect
circled and numbered
Would likely be marked ACCEPTABLE in a practice visual check.
Slow your travel slightly and pause at the upper toe — the undercut and the thin ripples are both telling you the same thing.
Surface visual only. Internal defects require RT/UT and a qualified inspector.
Layout illustration — real scored beads to follow
Being straight with you, first
This is a practice tool. It is not an inspection, and it is not a substitute for a Certified Welding Inspector. Three things it will never do:
See inside your weld
A photo shows the surface. It cannot show fusion, penetration, internal porosity, slag or root defects — and those are what fail under load.
Tell you it's safe to use
Hitches, lifting eyes, pressure vessels, racking, roll cages, anything over a person — ask a CWI. We refuse that question every time it's asked.
Guess at a bad photo
Too much glare, too blurry, no scale reference? You get "can't assess reliably" and how to fix the shot. A confident wrong call is worse than no call.
How it works
One photo. Four steps.
The coin-for-scale trick is already how welders photograph beads for feedback. We just made the app read it.
Frame it
On-screen guides put the bead in the middle third with a coin beside it. US quarter, UK 10p, €1 and others — you pick yours in Settings, we never guess which coin it is.
The shutter refuses bad shots
Glare, blur or poor light and the button stays disabled, with the specific fix on screen. You find out before the scan, not after.
It gets scored
Scale reference, bead toes, reinforcement height, undercut, ripple consistency, crater fill — measured against D1.1-style visual criteria, for practice. If you want to know what it's looking for, the defect guides explain each one.
You get one thing to change
Defects circled on your own photo, a plain-language read on your travel speed, arc length and angle, and a single fix for the next pass. Not a list. One thing.
The weld log
The score gets you in. The log is what makes you better.
Every bead you scan is kept with the settings that produced it — so you stop guessing which combination was the good one.
- Every setting, every bead. Amperage, voltage, wire feed, gas flow, stickout, rod and diameter, polarity, thickness, joint, position, travel direction. All optional — a rushed save on the shop floor is never blocked by an empty field.
- My best settings. The parameter combinations that historically score highest for you, by process and position. Not a chart from a blog — yours.
- Score trend over time. Filtered by process and position, so progress on 2G doesn't get flattered by your flat beads.
- First bead vs. latest, side by side. The single most convincing thing you can show an instructor, or yourself at 6am.
- Practice streak and a countdown to your test date.
- Rod inventory and consumable cost. What you're burning, and what it's costing you.
Built offline-first, because shop floors have terrible signal. Photos, scores and settings write to your phone the instant you capture them and sync when you're back on a connection. Nothing waits on a bar of reception.
Scope
What it covers right now
A narrow set done properly beats a broad set done by guessing. Everything outside this list has a waitlist inside the app.
| Area | Supported today |
|---|---|
| Processes | Stick (SMAW) · Flux-core (FCAW) · MIG (GMAW) · TIG (GTAW) |
| Material & joint | Carbon steel plate |
| Positions | Flat and horizontal — 1F/1G, 2F/2G |
| Consumables | 6010 · 6011 · 6013 · 7018 · 7024 · E71T-11 · E71T-GS · ER70S-6 · ER70S-3 · ER308L · ER4043 |
| Scale references | US quarter · UK 10p · UK 2p · UK £2 · €1 · CA quarter · AU $1 |
| On the waitlist | Aluminium · Stainless · Pipe · 3G/4G · Vertical and overhead |
The 12-sided £1 and the Canadian loonie aren't supported as scale references — they fail the roundness check and their "diameter" is ambiguous, which would silently rescale every measurement on the card.
Pricing
Three scored welds a month, free, forever
Including the shareable scorecard. A refused photo never costs you one of them — you got nothing out of it, so you don't pay for it.
The full card, the full log, the share export. Just a monthly ceiling on scoring.
Unlimited scoring. Works out at about $3.33 a month.
7-DAY FREE TRIALUnlimited scoring, month to month. Cancel whenever.
For people who'd rather not rent software. Limited to the first 500.
Prices in USD and subject to App Store regional pricing. Subscriptions are billed through your Apple ID and can be cancelled in your iPhone's Settings — nothing to email us about.
FAQ
Questions people ask first
Is this an inspection? Can I use it to pass a test?
No, on both counts. It scores the surface appearance of a practice bead against D1.1-style visual criteria so you can see what a critical eye would pick up. It is not an inspection, it doesn't certify anything, and it has no standing with any certification body. Use it to practise. Get a Certified Welding Inspector for the real thing.
Why does it need a coin in the photo?
Because a photo has no sense of size. Undercut depth, reinforcement height and ripple spacing are all measurements, and without a known object in frame the app would be inventing millimetres. You tell it which coin you use, it measures against that. It refuses to score without one — deliberately.
What if it says it can't assess my weld?
Then it genuinely couldn't — usually glare, blur, low light, or no visible scale reference. It tells you which, and how to fix the shot. That refusal doesn't use up a free scan. We'd rather say nothing than hand you a confident number pulled out of a bad photograph.
Will it tell me if my weld is strong enough?
Never. Not for a trailer hitch, a lifting eye, a roll cage, racking, a pressure vessel, or anything that ends up over somebody's head. A photograph cannot show fusion, penetration or internal defects, and those are what fail under load. Ask a CWI and get RT or UT done. The app refuses this question by design, every time.
Does it work without a signal?
The log does, completely — photos, settings and past scores all live on your phone and are there instantly whether you're online or not. Scoring itself needs a connection, so an offline capture is saved and scored automatically the moment you're back on a signal. Nothing gets lost waiting.
Do my weld photos go anywhere?
Your photo is sent to Google's Gemini API to be scored — that's how the score happens, and we won't pretend otherwise. We're on the free tier, and Google's terms for it say submitted content may be used to improve their products and may be read by human reviewers. So: check what's in the background before you shoot. If you sign in, your photos and log are also backed up to your account so a lost phone doesn't cost you your history. If you choose "keep everything on this phone" at sign-in, nothing leaves it except the photo being scored. Full detail is in the privacy policy.
Is my welding shown to anyone else?
Only if you choose it. The leaderboard is off until you turn it on, and even then it shows a display name and scores — never your photos, notes, settings or defect lists. Share cards go wherever you send them, and nowhere else. Have a look at the background of your photo before you post it, though: benches, jigs and part numbers end up in shot more often than people expect.
Do you support MIG, TIG, aluminium, pipe?
MIG and TIG on carbon steel plate, yes. Aluminium, stainless, pipe and the vertical/overhead positions are on a waitlist inside the app. We'd be guessing at those thresholds today, so we don't score them — telling you your aluminium looks fine when we can't actually tell would be the worst thing this app could do.
Who's building this?
Southport Web Services, in the UK. It's a small operation, which is the honest answer to "will this still be here next year" — the plan is to keep shipping and to say so publicly when we do. If something's broken or wrong, tell us and you'll get a human.
Not shipped yet — and we'd rather say so
The app is built and running. What it's waiting on is a Certified Welding Inspector review of the scoring rubric, because putting confident-looking numbers in front of welders before an inspector has checked them is the one mistake worth delaying for.