Cleveland The Dunwoody College of Technology recently upgraded its training facility with 18 of Lincoln Electric™s Power Wave® C300 multi-process wire feeder/welders and 18 Invertec® V205-T AC/DC TIG machines to accommodate a drastic increase in enrollment and help meet the industry™s demand for skilled workers.
Located in Minneapolis, Dunwoody set out to meet the needs of its broad student base, which includes 80 full-time and evening students in the school™s one-year program. The students are taught all of the basic types of welding and cutting procedures, including oxyacetylene, MIG, TIG and stick on various materials. This also includes apprentices and journeymen from the local plumbers and pipefitters union that primarily concentrate on stick welding applications.
Working with Lincoln Electrical technical sales representative Paul Hewitt and local distributor, the Minneapolis Oxygen Company, Dunwoody™s Academic Director of Manufacturing Technologies E.J. Daigle III chose the Power Wave C300 due to its multi-process capabilities and high-end functionality and the Invertec V205-T for its TIG and stick capabilities.
Dunwoody also chose these two models as both have stick welding capabilities, making it easy to transform the training facility from a multi-process training environment compatible to all processes and levels of skill to a stick welding lab for an entire classroom of apprentices from the unions.
In addition to the college™s capability needs, Dunwoody™s training facility had limited space and the compact footprint of each of these inverter-based machines allowed them to fit into existing welding booths while still leaving plenty of room for students to work.
Our welding program needed a solution to teach welding applications on a variety of materials, including steel, stainless steel and aluminum, Daigle said. Dunwoody challenged three of the leading welding manufacturers, and Lincoln was the only one that could deliver a complete solution to our welding needs.
Hewitt not only provided an on-site demonstration of the Power WaveC300 and Invertec V205-T™s capabilities, including stick, TIG, MIG, pulsed MIG and flux-core welding capabilities, but worked with the college to make the training facility upgrade an affordable investment.
Lincoln Electric is committed not only in providing a complete welding solution and the best customer service, but also supporting training and educational programs, Hewitt said.
In addition to providing Dunwoody College™s welding program instructors with a demonstration and access to Lincoln Electric™s training materials, Hewitt conducted on-site, hands-on welding training for each model machine with instructors and students, as well as the apprentices and journeymen currently going through training.
Dunwoody College™s Senior Welding Instructor Mark Carter has found the Power Wave C300™s technology makes it the ideal training tool. The machine™s lock-out features have allowed Carter and the Dunwoody instructors to set-up programs that lock students within certain welding parameters, teaching them to produce consistent, quality welds.
The Power Wave® C300™s memory locations can collect data and quickly recall procedures to show students how the machine is running and why a procedure did or did not work, Carter said.
The machine™s advanced technology allows instructors to better view each students welding performance and train them on the characteristics of a quality weld. The Power Wave C300 has proven a valuable asset to the Dunwoody training team equipping students and apprentices with the knowledge and skills to succeed in the workforce.
The Lincoln Electric Company, headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, is the world leader in the design, development and manufacture of arc welding products, robotic arc welding systems, fume extraction equipment and plasma and oxyfuel cutting equipment. The company holds a leading global position in the brazing and soldering alloys market. For more information, visit www.lincolnelectric.com.
