I don’t usually post racing stuff here, but check this out from Miller… and note that the driver is Elaine Larsen:
Elaine Larsen has over a decade of drag racing experience and is the driver of Miller’s Jet Dragster and the Embry-Riddle Jet Dragster. She has always had a love of racing and a need for speed. Twenty years after seeing her first Jet Funny Car, she was in the driver’s seat on the track…..CHECK OUT HER BIO–>
Crazy Germans and their sausage. And I fully mean that as a compliment, because we here at Arc-Zone.com were all amazed and highly entertained by what happened next.
German welders + sausage + welding machine = Electric grill for men??
Adventurous Germans Grill Sausages with an Industrial Welder
“Eventually, the tube was so hot that the arc had to be shut down because the fat was on the verge of spontaneous combustion.”
By Vin Marshall Posted 03.22.2010
Barbecue grills don’t typically require eye protection, but then, they’re typically not made from a giant TIG welder and an industrial sausage positioner either.
That’s something these Germans set out to change with the “Electric Grill For Men.”
What would you do if you needed to endurance-test a large industrial welding power supply?
You’d probably rig up something like the apparatus pictured here, in which a TIG welding torch draws a continuous arc along a slowly rotating piece of aluminum tubing mounted in a work positioner normally used for pipe welding.
As the long weld bead is laid down, the power supply is tested to verify that it can maintain its rated output and duty cycle without melting down. In the process, a great deal of heat is generated.
A new program on the Lummi Reservation is offering the equivalent of full scholarships to ten aspiring Native American welders for an intense 16 week welding course. They qualify as second-year union apprentices at the end of it!
New program teaches welding to Native Americans
JOHN STARK – THE BELLINGHAM HERALD
LUMMI RESERVATION – Ten Native American men are getting an intensive course in welding that they hope will enable them to get better jobs, even in a sluggish economy.
The students train 10 hours a day, six days a week for 16 weeks, under a program through a new partnership among the U.S. Department of Interior, Lummi Indian Business Council, United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, and Native American Fabricators Welding School, a private welding school that operates on Lummi Reservation.
Art George, a welder and former chairman of Nooksack Tribe, started the school in 2008 with his wife, Rebecca.
He said the demand for trained welders remains brisk at refineries, boat builders, construction sites and shipyards as the older generation of welders retires.
Students who complete the intensive program qualify for hiring as second-year union apprentices, with pay starting at about $20 an hour.
After four years, they could qualify for journeyman welder status and make more than twice that, George said.
Geography quiz time! Where is Guernsey? I’ll give you a hint: it’s one of the Channel Islands (and no, we’re not talking about the ones off the coast of California…)
Give up? Here you go: Guernsey. How’s that for an exotic locale? And what do ya know – there are welders there too!
Challenging the world’s welders
A group of apprentices from the College of Further Education are challenging the best welders in the world.
Three fourth year students hope their welding skills will allow them to reach the world final of the SkillWeld competition in London in 2011.
Guernsey man James Le Lievre was a UK finalist in the contest in 2008.
John Semenowicz, the programme manager for engineering at the college, said: “We’re talking about students in the premier league of welding.”
The Channel Island heat of the SkillWeld competition took place at the College of FE’s workshop in March 2010 as Guernsey’s three entrants became part of the 170 from across the UK who are competing.
No, we’re not talking about not insects, nor the Protestants. These are the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) who served during WWII (the first to ever do so) — right alongside the Rosies who helped build the planes in which they flew!
Female WWII aviators honored with gold medal
By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – A long-overlooked group of women who flew aircraft during World War II were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal on Wednesday.
Known as Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, they were the first women to fly U.S. military planes.
About 200 of these women aviators, mostly in their late 80s and early 90s and some in wheelchairs, came to the Capitol to accept the medal, the highest civilian honor bestowed by Congress.
In thanking them for their service, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said these women pilots went unrecognized for too long.
“Women Air Force Service Pilots, we are all your daughters, you taught us how to fly,” Pelosi said.
In accepting the award, WASP pilot Deanie Parrish said the women had volunteered to fly the planes without expectation that they would ever be thanked. Their mission was to fly noncombat missions to free up male pilots to fly overseas.
Albert Paley went from designing jewelry to creating sculptures of immense stature, but continued to use the same soft touch, even when creating giants out of steel.
Size, Scale and Detail in Creations of Steel
By BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO
Published: February 5, 2010
It is easy to be impressed by the Albert Paley retrospective at Grounds for Sculpture, the 35-acre sculpture park and museum on the former site of the New Jersey State Fairgrounds in Hamilton. The size and scale of the metal sculptures in this indoor exhibit are mind-blowing; some pieces are around 15 feet high, while others weigh up to a ton. They are monumental.
Born in Philadelphia in 1944, Mr. Paley initially worked in New York City making art jewelry, but in the late 1960s he moved to Rochester, where he is on the faculty of the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is essentially an abstract artist, assembling dynamic, flamboyant structures using wedges, blocks and ribbons of steel.
The artist’s training as a jewelry designer has served him extremely well, for while the scale of his artwork has exploded, his attention to detail has remained steadfast. He is a perfectionist who seems to take delight in challenging himself in terms of execution and concept. He is also the only heavy metal sculptor I know who can make his material seem fragile and delicate.
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, andin 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!
It’s never too late to start welding — that’s the lesson we can learn from Cynthia Daniel, who has a yard full of metal art to prove it!
Dallas welder transforms trash into garden sculptures
Monday, February 15, 2010
By DIANE REISCHEL / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Cynthia Daniel keeps a gangly old muffler in her carport, a silent lump she communes with, waiting for it to talk.
With age comes patience, says Daniel, a graphic artist for a Dallas publishing firm and a constant dreamer of trash. She’s more than a dreamer.
In recent years, this late-blooming welder has twisted, fired and honed a colony of eye-popping yard mates, some migrating to local sculpture shows, others charming their way into admirers’ back yards.
Her lively characters morph from the lowliest of throwaways, “found metal” she lifts from country lanes, junk yards and on quests through East Dallas for “big trash.”
Scraps speak to her, and she listens.
“I look at them every day in my yard, and they become something,” she says of her procedure for turning tractor springs, grilles or saw teeth into fish, flamingo or duck.
“Lately, I’m into fan blades. They become petals on flowers.”
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.
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.
