Broken Welders Everywhere!

If you were to walk into the NUHS metal shop, you would stumble across an awful sight. You would see a disarray of broken and unused welders. To some people this might not be an issue, but to the students in Mr. Nelson’s welding classes it is a huge problem. Without all the welders being operational, it takes longer to complete projects and challenge welds. This is problematic when working against tight deadlines and needing to share the remaining operational welders with the rest of the class.

Fortunately for the students, a $10,000 MEALC grant has been set aside for the purchase of two new welders. The new welders will include a Miller Dynasty 210 DX TIG welder package and a Lincoln Power MIG 256 with a spool gun. With the new MIG spool gun the welding students will once again be able to wire feed weld aluminum. The remaining money from the grant will be spent on consumables for all of the welders and plasma cutters. The plan for the welders that are currently broken is to send them to Matheson to get repaired. So the new welders will not be replacing the old welders. Instead there will be two new welding stations thus allowing more students to be working at once.

I asked Mr. Nelson, one of the CTE teachers at NUHS why he thinks we need to purchase new welders and he said, “Our technology is currently outdated and we want to stay relevant to the industry so we need a new TIG and MIG welder especially with the creation of Eagle Enterprises in the future.” He also said that there are plans to purchase a new pipe bender in the future since the current one is missing parts and is limited on which sizes it can bend. Overall students are very excited to start welding with the new equipment.