Class Action: Lincoln Electric Lights Up Welding Education

15.01.2018

If dirty, dark and dangerous is what you picture when someone mentions welding, then prepare to be educated on one of the hottest manufacturing careers of the next decade.

Ratty coveralls soaked in sweat and soot. Blinding sparks careening off a white-hot ball of energy mere inches from your face. A plume of smoke perpetually mingling around the acrid smell of melted metal and a steady stream of crude jokes. A blue-collar yoke tying you to middling pay and manual labor.

Mention the word "welding" to anyone outside the industry and this is the image it inevitably creates. But, like with so many other fields in today's advanced manufacturing world, that image is far out of date.

With around two decades of experience behind him, Jason Scales, the business manager for educational solutions at Lincoln Electric, knows these dirty, dark, and dangerous stereotypes all too well.

"A grumpy old, dirty industry—that's still what a lot of people imagine welding to be," the former agriculture mechanics teacher says. "But welding is a far advanced industry, very scientific with a lot of technology in it, and it often is a clean environment."

Lincoln Electric
The REALWELD welding training system gives students instant feedback on five parameters and allows instructors to track progress. This is one tool Lincoln Electric will use at its new Welding Technology & Training Center to speed up training time.

This is a familiar story in manufacturing today—tainted by outdated notions and bad PR, manufacturing leaders find themselves forced to constantly evangelize the progress and potential of these critical industries just to keep the applicant pool alive.

But now, Scales and the rest of Lincoln Electric have a new tool at their disposal to help do away with these manufacturing myths.

It comes in the form of Lincoln Electric's brand new $30 million Welding Technology & Training Center—a facility custom designed to provide the most advanced, tech-filled, science-based environment for welders of every tier, from recent high school grads who have never held a torch to seasoned pros.

Essentially, this will put all that evangelizing into action, creating a new generation of welders who truly understand the latest tools and technologies of the trade, plus trainers qualified to take those lessons to plants far outside the program's direct reach.

Focusing on education might seem beyond the purview of a manufacturer, but Scales says for too long he's heard conflicting reports from schools who say their welding students can't find jobs and manufacturers who say they can't find people to fill welding jobs.

"That tells me there's a disconnect between what's going on in education at some institutions and what the industry truly needs from that institution," Scales says.

And this school, like the industry it serves, is all about fusing together what was once separate and providing a solid foundation on which to build.