Welder dressed for safety, comfort and style.

Some welders like helmets with designs.

Other welders like plain, black helmets.

Cowskin or pigskin jackets help protect welders.

Space technology cools astronauts, race-car drivers and welders.

Mixing animal skins provides protection and dexterity.

Lightweight jacket helps keep welders cool.

Safety is the primary reason welders don any type of welding gear. Until the last decade, welding wear makers addressed that need with products that functioned well but varied little in shape, fabric or material largely because welders did not seek change — they accepted the status quo. That has changed, and manufacturers today are responding with products that are aesthetically pleasing — and comfortable — and that help welders perform their jobs better.

Welding helmets
If helmets were a product of the fashion industry, they would be considered de rigueur — a required element of any trendy fashion statement. Some welders use the shape of or design on their helmets to make personal statements. On one side of the welding helmet design spectrum are welders who choose the novelty helmets offered by such companies as Hoodlum. On the other side are those who opt for plain, black helmets. In between are welders who select helmets with decals or who personalize them in some way, either with auto-darkening filters or bright colors.

"There is definitely a fashion trend out there in decal helmets," says Tom Bothoff, product manager for Bacou-Dalloz (www.bacou-dalloz.com). Many manufacturers are now offering helmets with decals. Bacou-Dalloz plans to address this trend with new products in the fall, says Bothoff. He notes that there are other ways of differentiating or personalizing helmets. "A lot of things can be done with paint itself," he says. Using paint to differentiate welding helmets is a trend that Fred Thomas, an ArcOne (www.arc1weldsafe.com) sales manager, noticed at the World Ag Expo, held in February at the Tulare County Fairgrounds in California.

ArcOne, in support of Praxair Distribution Inc.'s booth at the fair, provided a person who was painting pin-stripe designs on helmets, says Thomas, adding that the service was popular. "We suggested designs, but people said they wanted the same design they had on their motorcycle helmets." Some simply wanted their names on their helmets, he adds.

Personal expression aside, welders also want comfort, which is as personalized in a helmet as paint or decoration. For some, comfort has to do with the weight of their helmet. Jackson Products Inc. (www.jacksonproducts.com) is one of the manufacturers that is addressing welders' desire for lightweight gear. It recently introduced a helmet with a 6 oz. shell.

For other welders, comfort means wearing the same helmet day in and day out, sometimes for 40-odd years. For example, one welder purchased a helmet from Sellstrom Manufacturing Co. (www.sellstrom.com) in 1946. Upon his retirement in 1987, he sent the helmet to Sellstrom with a letter expressing his appreciation to the company for his helmet's comfort and durability, says Rusty Franklin, vice president of sales and marketing.

However, by standards that most welders have today, helmets made in the 1940s are not comfortable. Instead, they are seen as cumbersome and heavy. The point is that the welder who used that helmet was comfortable working in it for more than 40 years. All he ever needed or, perhaps, wanted to do was to change the filter, and manufacturers are providing that option in both standard and autodarkening versions.

Clean air
"Hazards are different [in welding] and in some places more complicated because of the welding process, but fundamentally welders want products (personal protective equipment) that perform and are comfortable, easy to use and have that transparent appeal 'I've got it on but it doesn't feel like I have it on,'" says Rusty Franklin of Sellstrom Manufacturing.

In welding, personal protective equipment includes powered air-purifying respirators.

John Kehoe of 3M Occupational Health and Environmental Safety (www.3m.com/occsafety) notes that concern about the outcome of welding fume litigation is affecting the market for respirators. Insurance companies are counseling and advising welding shops to provide the best possible personal protection devices available to their welders as a measure to reduce the potential for liability in health-related litigation.

Not all welders need respirators, but there is a trend toward integrating welding helmets and respirators for welders who are required by law or company policy to wear respirators or who just want one. This trend is growing because welders don't want to wear respirators that fit tight on the face, says Kehoe. Such respirators restrict comfort and often increase heat.

Filters for powered air-purifying respirators can serve distinct functions. One type of filter eliminates particles. The other type, such as a chemical cartridge typified by 3M's Adflo replacement cartridge for its Adflo air-purifying respirator system, eliminates particles and provides additional protection by filtering organic, sulfur dioxide, chlorine and hydrogen chloride vapors.

3M's Adflo powered air-purifying respirator system stacks a highefficiency particle filter with an Adflo vapor filter. The stacked filters are combined with a belt and rechargeable battery and connected to a helmet. 3M Welding, formerly Hornell Inc. (www.hornell.com), provides such helmet systems and says they produce a flow of air that is distributed throughout the breathing zone within the helmet.

A similar battery-powered air purifying respiratory system is available from ArcOne. This system can be used with a variety of the company's welding helmets to blow a constant supply of fresh, filtered air over the face.

Bacou-Dalloz plans to introduce two powered airpurifying respirators in the United States later this year, says Tom Bothoff, product manager.

Looking Hot, Feeling Cool
While it may be cool to look fashionable while welding, feeling — and staying — cool can be a life saver.

One topic that is currently being reviewed as a potential safety issue is workers' exposure to the unrelenting and excessive heat that could be associated with welding. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has guidelines in place and offers a publication on heat stress (www.osha.gov/Publications/osha3154.pdf), but those guidelines often are ignored. The State of California has taken the OSHA guidelines a step further, by adopting a permanent heat stress standard that is designed to protect workers.

Excessive exposure to heat can lead to heat-related illnesses, such as heat-exhaustion and heat-stroke, and death. The problem for supervisors and welders is that indications that welders are suffering from heat-stress often are concealed by protective clothing or are attributed to some other factor. For example: heat exhaustion could contribute to a loss of balance that would cause a person to fall off scaffolding, yet an accident report would not cite heat exhaustion as the contributing factor in the fall.

NASA and its astronauts faced a problem with heat. They addressed the problem by developing garments that have tubes of water running through them. These garments were worn by astronauts under their space suits when walking outside the spacecraft or on the moon. That technology now is being used by race car drivers and a number of other persons in fields where high heat could be a debilitating problem.

Sellstrom Manufacturing is making that water-cooled garment technology available to welders through its Cool Shirt products.

The Cool Shirt is manufactured by Shafer Enterprises LLC (www.coolshirt.net). It is designed in Tshirt-style, and the lightweight cotton garment has more than 50 feet of medicalgrade capillary tubing stitched on the front and back. The tubing is connected to a compact cooling unit that holds ice, water, and a pump to supply chilled water to the shirt to keep its wearer cool.

Fit to wear
For decades, welding garments made of split cowhide or cotton were the only choice available to welders who sought protection from hot sparks, UV and IR rays, and hot metal.

"So many other fields and industries, such as automotive racing, have had great advancements in safety apparel. Not only do they have safe products, but they are using highend materials with stylization. Some industries — welding included — are now beginning to play catch-up, breaking away from the designs and the one-size-fitsall mentality that has been around for the last 40 years, says John Swartz, product manager for Miller Welding Components & Consumables (www.millerwelds.com). That shift in attitude and the application of technology is apparent in the gloves and other welding apparel offered by several manufacturers.

Miller, for example, is launching four gloves designed and constructed of fabrics that it says provide dexterity, comfort and protection. One of the gloves — the MIG glove — is designed for mediumduty MIG welding. It has curved fingers and is made of top grain cowhide and pigskin sewn together with Kevlar thread. By comparison, Texas American Safety Co. (www.tasco-safety.com) makes a TIG glove of goatskin, a leather they say is stronger and more durable than cowskin or pigskin and is highly recommended for applications requiring tactile sensitivity.

Jimmy Wu, national marketing manager of Revco Industries Inc. (www.revcoindustries.com) points out that his company chose quality grain goatskin for its TIG glove because of the leather's softness and for its durability even when it is cut in thinner segments. Using thin segments of leather for gloves helps maintain hand dexterity.

Perfect Fit Glove, a Bacou-Dalloz company, offers heat-resistant gloves made of a fabric produced by Carbtex Corp. (www.carbtex.com). Carbtex fabrics are made of tecgen, a high-performance carbon fiber.

Welding jacket makers, including Steiner Industries and Revco, also are using nontraditional fabrics, such as replacing splitcowhide with grained pig-skin to increase comfort and mobility for welders. While topgrade, split-cowhide jackets offer the best overall protection for welders, grained pigskin jackets weigh 50 percent less than comparable split-cowhide jackets, and can be used when the level of protection offered by cowhide is not needed. "Welders say they are more comfortable in the pigskin," says Wu.

A word of caution Not all welding filters are created equal. Auto-darkening lens technology is fairly stable, says ArcOne's Thomas. However, he adds that inexpensive filters that are being supplied from China often do not have the quality required for full protection. Bothoff says Bacou-Dalloz has tested many of the auto-darkening filters made in China and found they have optical problems, such as pinholes or the incorrect shade. Bothoff adds that some inexpensive filters have mechanical problems, such as not passing impact tests. But this does not mean that all filters made in Asia are of poor quality. A number of U.S. companies manufacture auto-darkening products off shore, but those companies, including Sellstrom, engineer and test their off-shore-produced products and confirm them to standards established by the American National Standards Institute, the Canadian Standards Institute and Conformitè Europèenne, says Franklin.