With the new xFUME VAC series we are eliminating harmful welding fumes.

In any manufacturing location across the world, air quality and fume control is an increasing concern. While the welder himself bears the most burden in weld fume exposure and long term health risks, it’s not limited to just the welding operator. Across the entire shop floor – from the forklift operator to administrative staff and walk the floor, exposure to weld fumes is a second hand smoke experience. Even if it’s not always visible or noxious, it’s there. There isn’t a welding operation today that in some way doesn’t need fume extraction.

With fume extraction systems in welding, the filter is usually a non-consideration. After all, it’s the fume extraction system doing all the work, right?

As material selections in automotive manufacturing move further into the high-strength realm, along with the more prevalent usage of difficult-to-weld materials such as aluminum, developing robust processes for joining these materials becomes ever more critical. Adaptation of technologies such as real-time seam tracking, gap bridging, beam oscillation, and integrated clamping to laser-related processes allows for them to be used in a more mainstream approach.

When I read this article from The Atlantic last week on welding salaries and the posits of people proclaiming over the last few years that welders can make $150,000 USD a year, I remembered the countless Instagram and Facebook memes I see claiming similar promises of comfortable lifestyles by getting into one of the more admirable and skilled trades professions out there, and all the welders commenting about that decidedly not being the case.

Welding guns and MIG welding in general come with a lot of talk regarding best practices and how to do certain things right.

GTAW, or TIG welding as the American Welding Society officially calls it, is a welding process where the joining of metals occurs through the electric arc established between a non-consumable tungsten electrode and the base material, both protected in the welding zone, for an atmosphere of inert gas.

If you know welding, then you know, one of the more complicated types of materials to work with is aluminum. Preparation, wire feeding, and shielding gas play a big role in successfully welding with aluminum.

What is Plasma Welding?
 
‘Plasma’ is the fourth state of Matter.

In today’s environment it is absolutely critical to minimize downtime and operate in the most efficient manner. Reasons for downtime are many and varied, particularly in the welding fabrication field. Grounding problems, gas leaks, contaminated material, machinery malfunction and worn components represent a few of the many issues confronted. In MIG welding, one of the most frustrating is wire feed problems and MIG gun liner issues in general.

With your MIG gun you have a variety of welding nozzle designs to choose from, and sometimes the decision on which to choose is not always clear.