It’s a sure bet that everything is going to change at the exact moment that you’re comfortable and/or when you think you know everything.

Many of the articles in this issue deal with the changes that are brought about or made necessary by advances in technology or, simply, because we know more than we did before.

Associate Editor Clare Goldsberry writes about how welders are finding more uses for the MIG welding process because the process, technologies that support it and products that needed all are evolving.

While gas-metal arc (MIG) welding always has been a famously easy process to use, it also has been famed as a process that cannot quite produce the best looking welds or the most accurate welds. If you wanted exact and pretty welds, you knew you have to use tungsten inertgas (TIG) or arc welding do the job.

Now, however, it’s getting so that you can’t say that anymore.

Better controls, better welding guns, improvements in the quality of welding wire all are combining to make MIG more competitive with TIG welding, and broadening – even if at glacial speed – the number of applications in which MIG can be used.

Within MIG welding it has been a given that welders lose a lot of gas in the surge of shielding gas at the start of the weld, yet that surge of gases can cause porosity in the weld, and it costs plenty of money.

Gerry Uttrachi saw that waste, analyzed it, and found a way to cut it down. We have an article in this issue about the solution that he came up with to prevent waste – which he now is selling – and how it is changing the way welders look at the process that they hold in their hands.

Here’s one final example: Safety is important to everyone. By its very nature, welding is a dangerous job, and the danger comes from many directions, including the heat of the process, the materials that are being heated and joined, and the fumes that the heat produces.

These dangers are obvious to everyone in the industry, yet not every welder takes the precautions that are needed to keep himself or herself save.

We look at one vital piece of safety equipment – respirators – and what welders have to say about them. The article is not a scientific survey, but a sampling of comments from the Internet forum WeldingWeb.com. You can find the comments at www.weldingweb.com/showthread.php?t=9096.

The guys who are talking on the website acknowledge that respirators are necessary parts of their lives and, more importantly, necessary for them to keep living. They talk about which ones are comfortable, why they’re good, and what can be done to make them better.

After someone grouses about having to wear a respirator at all, another someone points out that perforated lungs could be a result of not using a respirator, and pointedly says: “Go ahead, be a man. Wear your respirator.”

You can imagine that 20 years ago – maybe even 10 years ago – the attitude could have been just the opposite, that the manly attitude would have been to not wear the respirator.

Each one of these examples demonstrates advances that have been made in technology, in efficiency and, most importantly, in attitude toward safety and health.

And, each one of these demonstrate how change is affecting the way things are disrupts what people “know.” And, while they might make you a bit uncomfortable, they’re pushing the limits and improving the industry.

Bruce Vernyi, Editor-in-Chief
E-mail: bvernyi@penton.com