It was a fun night for me at the monthly American Welding Society — San Diego Section meeting.  This night’s topic?  Induction heating with a system unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

Gone are the days of waiting hours and hours for your length of pipe to warm up to the right temperature –

Miller has just released the new ProHeat 35 Induction Heating System, which works by inducing heat electromagnetically, rather than via a conductor, thus saving the operator incredible amounts of time and energy.

Simply wrap the induction coils around whatever piece of metal you’re working on, and in just a few minutes, you’re ready to go!

This picture was taken looking inside the length of pipe that was being heated up by the ProHeat 35 — you can’t see it here, but that tube was glowing red hot on the inside!

And even better, when I tried touching the coils wrapped around it?
Cold as ice! This product is simply amazing!

But perhaps the best part about this whole new system is that you don’t even have to buy it! Red-D-Arc will rent out one of their machines to you for as long as you need!

In Standwood, Washington, they’ve got it a little backwards — here, the students have become the teachers.  The teens are teaching the adults how to weld!!

Stanwood students teach adults welding
By GALE FIEGE
THE DAILY HERALD

STANWOOD, Wash. — When a group of high school welding students decided to offer a class for the community, they never imagined having to turn people away.

“It was amazing to us. We had 25 people on a waiting list right off the bat,” said teacher Darryl Main, adviser for Stanwood High School’s Agricultural Mechanics Club. “The community welding course has been so well-received, we might have to run another one this spring.”

For $60, adult students get 12 hours of instruction focusing on shielded metal and gas metal arc welding. Proceeds from the class help fund the club’s field trips and contest travel expenses.

On a recent Thursday, the garage doors to Stanwood’s ag shop were flung wide open. Twenty adults in protective helmets, coveralls and heavy gloves huddled over metal pieces, torches in hand and sparks flying, while teenagers coached them one-on-one through the welding process.

“It’s great to watch the kids teaching, and the adults enjoying learning from them,” Main said. “There’s no better way to learn than to teach. You can just see the self-esteem of the kids go up. They feel empowered and that’s pretty dang cool.”

Nearly half of the adult students in the class are women.

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Welding and school spirit come together for the students of
Colorado’s Hayden School District.  Each of the schools are welding a mascot — and get this — they’re welding it for one of the other schools!

Hayden welding students design steel pieces depicting school mascots

By Jack Weinstein Sunday, January 31, 2010

Hayden — Kevin Kleckler, director of the Babson-Carpenter Career and Technical Education Center, hopes a project some of his welding students are working on will promote goodwill among the area school districts.

Hayden School District students participating in the welding program at the vocational education facility are designing and creating steel pieces, made from scrap metal, that depict the mascots of the Steamboat Springs, South Routt and Moffat County school districts.

Senior Oscar Rodriguez and junior Chris Zirkle completed Moffat County’s bulldog mascot last week. They had planned to donate the mascot to the school’s student leadership.

A student group in the welding class recently completed the Soroco ram. Another group is nearly finished with the Steamboat Springs sailor.

Rodriguez and Zirkle, having finished the bulldog, began a new project last week. On Tuesday morning, they were piecing together steel that eventually would depict the Denver Broncos logo.

When Rodriguez and Zirkle finish the Bronco in the next few weeks, it will be about 5 feet long and 3 feet tall. They’ll eventually present it to the Broncos through a contact Kleckler has with the team.

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What are you doing this Sunday? Planning on going to church?

How about Metal Church, with your favorite preacher, Jesse James?!?

It must be a dream come true for students at the Western Dakota Technical Institute.  I mean, since when do you get to custom build a motorcycle during class, and get credit for it?!?

WDTI students gear up for bike build

Barbara Soderlin Journal staff
Posted: Thursday, January 28, 2010 9:15 am

Western Dakota Technical Institute welding students will be able to add “custom motorcycle builder” to their resumes, thanks to a program announced Wednesday.

A bike, built by a team of WDTI students working under custom builder Michael Prugh of Prugh Design in Black Hawk, will be auctioned at the annual Sturgis motorcycle rally Legends Ride this summer.

“I don’t know bikes, but I’m hoping to learn,” said welding student Don Pyn, a custom hot rod enthusiast. “It’s along the line of what I want to get into when I’m done with school.”

Rod Woodruff, owner of the Buffalo Chip campground, which created the charity ride two years ago, announced the program in the technical college’s welding lab surrounded by welding students.

He said the partnership, called the 2k10 Challenge, would help develop a workforce skilled in motorcycle building, which would benefit the growing number of bike builders in the Black Hills.

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