Harris Industrial Gases - Welding Equipment & Supplies

Spatter. It seems so minor, so insignificant when you look at all your business costs. Yet, these small bits of molten metal stuck on your final welded piece can create quite a price tag when you need to remove it. Do you consider spatter to be of little concern to your business? When evaluating cost reduction areas along a production line – often times more “serious” issues are raised. Has spatter ever been brought up as a cost issue?

Spatter causes production costs like: cost of operator time spent applying pre-weld spatter sprays and the time spent removing spatter after welding? Re-work is also costly. How many of your parts need to be grinded and re-welded because of spatter?

There are also material costs – spatter...

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a sweeping critique of the nation’s educational system based on a recent report from the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE).

The report found that only 18 out of 100 high school freshman will go on to graduate on time and receive a two year degree within three years or a four year degree within six years. Dismal findings, to be sure, but Bloomberg misuses the study to argue for a wholesale revamp of the educational system away from technical and trade education and toward traditional university education.

“It used to be that those without college degrees could count on well-paying jobs in manual labor; those days are long gone,”...

With the cost of fuel at a premium, and forecasters projecting this summer’s fuel costs to reach record highs, everyone is looking for ways to decrease their fuel consumption. Contractors who are already closely watching their overhead are continuously researching methods for cost reduction on their jobs. And, we talk and talk about efficiency, but are we really demonstrating efficiency techniques? Sure, but only if it doesn’t affect our comfort, convenience and quality, right?

And, what about change? No one really likes change. We continue to do things the way we always have, and use the products we’ve always used, because change can be…well, scary. In many cases the theory to leave well enough alone is inarguable. But, what...

Back in 1811 England, a group of highly-skilled textile artisans (named Luddites after their leader, Ned Ludd) staged a revolt against technologically-advanced looms that allowed relatively unskilled labor to cheaply and quickly produce textiles.

While weaving fibers into cloth doesn’t share much in common with joining metal through high current loads, they do share the same skepticism toward technological advancement.

It seems we all know one of those guys who will take their 1970’s era welding machine any day over the high-tech machines being manufactured today. There’s no denying the level of skill and artistry those guys have developed over long years of fidelity to their nearly indestructible machines — artistry that,...

A recent survey from the National Safety Council (NSC) congress found that 85 percent of safety professionals have observed non-compliance with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) regulations at their companies.

For welders, especially in southern states, this should come as no surprise. Welding is a hot activity even without any protective equipment. Add the helmet, beanie, gloves, jacket, boots, full-length pants and a hot summer day, and you’ve got a downright unbearable environment.  In fact, fifty-seven percent of the safety professionals responded that their co-workers did not wear their PPE because it was uncomfortable.

Yet suffering a severe burn is surely a lot more uncomfortable than wearing a good pair of gloves or protective...

The average American welder is now in his 50s, and he’s retiring at a faster rate than his children are joining the welding trade. The aging workforce is one of the primary causes of the welder shortage and has manufacturers scrambling to find, hire and train new welders through a number of recruitment avenues.

But ramping up recruitment efforts doesn’t have to be the only solution to the problem — one way to reduce the importance of finding new welders is by extending the careers of existing welders through making welding as ergonomically comfortable as possible.
Installing soft, yet resilient flooring will reduce foot, leg and back pain that can cause serious problems after years of standing.

Locating production materials and...

    Wouldn’t it be great if there were a time-tested way to measurably improve the productivity, efficiency and, ultimately, the profitability of your company’s welding operations?

    And wouldn’t it be even better if it didn’t require large capital equipment purchases? Kaizen (Japanese for Continuous Improvement) is a management system that can do exactly that.

    Kaizen is an exacting and time tested method for helping a business focus its efforts in the areas that matter most. Its principal emphases are on long-term improvement over short term gains and optimizing an existing system rather than overhauling it with an expensive new one. Click

In Racine, Wisconsin, the brainchild project of a local employer and a local technical college took 15 eager students and made them certified welders in an 8-week, 320-hour course. Click here to read the full Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article.

The graduates, some of them nearing 50 years old, can now look forward to a better life. The employer has all the qualified welders he needs and access to more as his business expands. The technical school eliminated its program waiting list and generated powerful reputational credit for being an innovator in meeting workforce demands, which will certainly pay dividends in its enrollment figures.

The silver lining to the current...

    A recent three-part opinion column by Charles Murray in the Wall Street Journal takes the controversial position that we need to start accepting that some people are just plain smarter than others.

    From there, Murray concludes that far too many people are being pushed into four year colleges for which they are not mentally equipped, that there are many people who are intelligent enough for a four year university but also don’t belong there and that there is an inappropriate stigma attached to trade schools and other types of technical training.

    Although many of Murray’s claims are inflammatory and debatable—that 75 percent of the population, based on their IQ scores, are...

    A recent study by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that in 2004 (the most recently available statistics) Chinese manufacturing companies compensated their employees at three percent of the average American company—$0.67 per hour in china compared to $22.87 in the US.     

    With many welding functions easily moved to overseas production centers, this disparity should give pause to both employers, who will need to compete with companies that do take advantage of cheap foreign labor, and welders, who could lose their jobs as a result.       There are several measures that can be taken to even the playing...