The CWB Association hosted this year's annual CanWeld Conference in Moncton, NB. Join us as we bring you special episodes recorded in person to keep our members on top of what’s new and exciting in the steel and welding industry.
Ever wondered what it takes to revolutionize welding in shipbuilding? Buckle up as we
embark on an insightful journey with Jim Hansen, a Project Engineer at EWI. From his captivating drive across borders to his anticipated work with Irving Shipbuilding, Jim shares his in-depth knowledge and experiences in a way that will keep you hooked from start to finish. This episode is sure to leave you with a wealth of knowledge and a newfound appreciation for the world of welding and shipbuilding.
Check out EWI:
Website: https://ewi.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ewiinnovation/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/edisonwelding
Thank you to our Podcast Advertisers:
Canada Welding Supply: https://canadaweldingsupply.ca/
WeldReady: https://weld-ready.ca/
CanWeld Conference is all about bringing the welding, fabricating, and finishing industries together to increase the visibility of Canada's manufacturing heartland region and highlight different industries across Canada. Schedule the next event in your calendar: June 12th-13th, 2024 with Fabtech Canada in Toronto, ON! Are you interested in speaking at CanWeld? Check out the Call for Papers: https://www.cwbgroup.org/association/conferences
The CWB Association hosted this year's annual CanWeld Conference in Moncton, NB. Join us as we bring you special episodes recorded in person to keep our members on top of what’s new and exciting in the steel and welding industry.
Ever wondered what it takes to revolutionize welding in shipbuilding? Buckle up as we
embark on an insightful journey with Jim Hansen, a Project Engineer at EWI. From his captivating drive across borders to his anticipated work with Irving Shipbuilding, Jim shares his in-depth knowledge and experiences in a way that will keep you hooked from start to finish. This episode is sure to leave you with a wealth of knowledge and a newfound appreciation for the world of welding and shipbuilding.
Check out EWI:
Website: https://ewi.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ewiinnovation/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/edisonwelding
Thank you to our Podcast Advertisers:
Canada Welding Supply: https://canadaweldingsupply.ca/
WeldReady: https://weld-ready.ca/
CanWeld Conference is all about bringing the welding, fabricating, and finishing industries together to increase the visibility of Canada's manufacturing heartland region and highlight different industries across Canada. Schedule the next event in your calendar: June 12th-13th, 2024 with Fabtech Canada in Toronto, ON! Are you interested in speaking at CanWeld? Check out the Call for Papers: https://www.cwbgroup.org/association/conferences
Alright, I'm check, check, I'm good. So I'm Max Ron. Max Max Ron. Shitwb Association Welding Podcast. Today we have a really cool guest Welding Podcast. The show is about to begin.
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Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to another edition of the CWBE Association Podcast. My name is Max Ron and, as always, scouring the planet for the greatest content that you can find, here we are this week in Monkton, new Brunswick. We are at the Canwell Show. This is our yearly annual show that we do here for the CWBE group and we're having lots of fun. We've got speakers from all over the world. We've got a number of fantastic people that have come here to do presentations. We've got sponsors, we've got vendors, we've got tables and we have a bunch of great events that have been happening. So as part of that, we have pulled in Jim Hansen here who's going to talk to us. He's a project engineer at EWI and I'm going to grill the guy. How's it going?
Speaker 2:I'm doing really well, Max. How are you doing today?
Speaker 1:I'm good man. It's been a lot of fun this week. I'm a little bit tired. How are you? How are you tired?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. You know I had a long travel day up here getting up here from Columbus Ohio, but really excited to be speaking up in Canada and this has just been awesome. Some really good networking already and, yeah, just happy to be up here. I've got two presentations to give one down so far, so everything's going very well. What have they been on so far? What's the two? So I'll be speaking. This morning I spoke about very dark gas and lark welding for improved shipbuilding quality. This is a project that we've been working on down at EWI for two iterations of the project. It's been over about two and a half years now and then, since Moncton's a little difficult to get to from the States, I'm picking up a presentation. A coworker had some commitments later on in the week so I ended up. I'll be speaking on a cooling rate monitoring method for oil and gas pipelines. That was a result of some failures in the oil fields. We picked up this research and I'll be speaking about that for a colleague.
Speaker 1:That sounds like some pretty heavy stuff. Now I laugh when you said about it's tough to get to Moncton, new Brunswick. I mean I recommend everyone in their career or life in general to visit the East Coast of Canada at some point. It's beautiful out here. It really is nice if you get out.
Speaker 2:So I actually I made my travel day a little harder on myself than I probably needed to. I ended up flying into Bangor, Maine, so I could do that drive kind of along the coasts just to kind of check out the area, because this is my first time to the Eastern coast of Canada. I've been out West over to Vancouver and was able to get out to Victoria and Vancouver Island, but this is my first time in the East Coast and it's been really nice so far. How was the drive? It was beautiful About four hours over from Bangor, nice, easy border crossing. So I thought it would have been a little easier probably to fly on the Moncton. But you didn't get the rain. A little bit of rain, but not too bad Okay.
Speaker 1:Because it rained pretty hard here on the Monday, Sunday, Monday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it caught just a little bit out of me, but clear skies, since I've been in Canada.
Speaker 1:So you know we've had people try to have. You know there's some travel issues getting out here just because it's a smaller area. But that was one of the things that we decided about, like for Canada, like can we get in front of a you know more niche locations? Because no matter where you go in the world, big or small, there's industry. Right, there's kind of some type of industry out here where mainly mining and shipbuilding. You know this is mainly what's out here and it's really interesting. You said you've worked on projects with, you know, c-span. Have you seen any possible work out here with, like, irving, shipbuilding?
Speaker 2:So I was able to meet with a couple gentlemen from Irving this morning Mark and Greg. Yeah, I had some questions from my buried art talk and hopefully getting contact with them some more about potential work being affiliated. That EWI is now a CDBB. It kind of makes things a little bit easier. They can. Companies of course up in Canada would rather keep their money with Canadian companies, so now that we're affiliated that sell gets much easier.
Speaker 2:You can have both those check marks. Yeah, I'd say much easier for people. So it's been great working with CDBB and being up here.
Speaker 1:So let's start with your life and your journey. So a project engineer? You know that's there's engineer world, and then there's a million types of engineers, right? So what is a project engineer and what does a project engineer do?
Speaker 2:So a project engineer at a particularly EWI. That is kind of where, where you start coming out of school, where you know it's going to be a meander.
Speaker 2:We start out, we were mostly working on projects that have already been sold. So older engineers, business associates will will either get reached out to by customers will either, or through forums like this they meet customers, figure out problems they have. We'll write up a proposal at EWI and just kind of complete that work for them. So when I started out it's really had a shipbuilding focus and heavy industry. So I'm mostly doing thick section arc welding but completing work that other people have sold. Now that I've been in this role for about just under four years now, I'm starting to sell my own work and kind of complete that, complete the research that I've been selling. So that is more or less.
Speaker 1:So you're like an engineer of the process of work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that'd be a good way to say it. We're working at EWI guys, since there's such a range of arc welding processes, even once you get into the arc welding group.
Speaker 1:There's a million other pieces to it.
Speaker 2:You got to be good at a lot of stuff and being able to run like a sub arc process one day and then pop over to maybe you're working flux core welding on a cobot the next day. So it's kind of being nimble and being able to adapt across the range of arc welding processes just because we're seeing different stuff all the time.
Speaker 1:So EWI, you know it's an American company. It's in Columbus, ohio, and in Buffalo, new York, Yep. So you know where are you from. Are you local to either of those areas or where's your roots?
Speaker 2:So no, I am not. I'm actually from the Eastern coast of the US. I grew up in Connecticut and ended up going out to Ohio State for college. I had never heard of welding engineering before but I got incredibly lucky and kind of met some people in welding engineering my first semester at OSU. I was never going to be a kind of person that could sit behind a desk all the time. I really liked like that hands on lab work and being in a manufacturing environment. So second semester at OSU I switched in the welding engineering program and have really not looked back not looked back whatsoever. It has been a lot of fun. I love being down in the lab, being able to go hands on weld work with robots Because, like I was saying, I was never going to be someone that is to be behind a desk 100% of the time.
Speaker 1:How did you end up in the engineering world at all? You know, as a kid, you know you walk into a classroom of 12 year olds and you say you know, put your hands up. Who wants to be a welder or who wants to be an engineer? You don't get a lot of hands up. You know everybody wants to be a firefighter or something weird.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, max, I didn't really have another option but to be an engineer. So both my parents are materials engineers my mom was a ceramicist and then my dad is a metallurgical engineer. We're doing math workbooks every summer. They really You're going to be an engineer or son. Without saying that there's more or less how it went. So they really kind of coached this up and did a good job, like showing me like what you can achieve being an engineer. I always like building stuff and just kind of went from there.
Speaker 1:When you first went to university. Then you went there to be an engineer. What kind of engineer did you see yourself being before you knew about weld engineering?
Speaker 2:I really didn't know. So I just went in mechanical. I like building stuff, let's see, let's figure out something with this. And then kind of once I got my eyes open to the field of welding engineering, because at least in the States there's not a lot of schools. So once I kind of realized that that was an option, I was like why haven't? I been doing this the whole time.
Speaker 1:Well, both your parents must have really thought that would be an interesting like. I mean they must have been living by curiously through you back in college. So, as a metallurgist, for you to go on to like weld engineering, it's like, bro, I know what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my dad especially was like super interested and as I started doing stuff like undergrad research, he'd be way into what I'd be working on. He's just finishing up getting ready to retire as a materials engineer at Pratt Whitney out in Connecticut.
Speaker 1:And your mom is a ceramicist, which is also crystal structure also. You know lattices and and you know grains, and so it's not much of a stretch there either.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. And so she. Yeah, the lot of the ceramic stuff goes over my head. But she did that for five years, had kids. Engineering wasn't really for her after that, so she ended up going back and is a special needs tutor now, and the elementary level. So that sounds way harder. I would certainly have to agree with you. But no, she absolutely loves it.
Speaker 1:Awesome, awesome. So you're in school in Ohio and you meet some people that are like drink the weld engineer juice. You're like, gladly, yeah, and you start down this program. You know EWI is in the neighborhood, basically right. So at that point was there already like an EWI connection? Is this a place people were doing, you know? You know internships, that and stuff like that. Or did you have plans like I'm going to finish school, I'm going to go work for Elon or something like I don't know? Like what was your plans in terms of your college life?
Speaker 2:So I didn't really know and I was pretty flexible until I had my first internship my sophomore year. I started working in the summers for General Dynamics Electric Boat and their Groton shipyard and it really turned me on the shipbuilding and I've kind of been doing similar welding engineering work since then. I honestly got lucky because I was going back home to Connecticut every summer and that's where that shipyard was. I figured I'll apply here. They were nice enough to accept me and they did a really, really good job, kind of coaching me up and helped me figure out what I want me to just get in your path, yeah.
Speaker 2:And that kind of like high mix, low volume, really intense welding engineering. Just really got a R and D wrapped around everything, yep so.
Speaker 2:I was working in their weld development lab, so it was about 60%. There's a problem in production. We got to figure out why it's happening, how to fix it, how are we going to dig it out and complete that repair? Mm, hmm. And then about 40% of it was true R and D, where there's either a future class of boats or an improvement that someone would like to make, and we got to figure out how are we going to get that new alloy system in. How are we going to mitigate this cracking problem?
Speaker 1:And when you're talking boats, what are we talking about here?
Speaker 2:Like are these like? Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Are we talking? Like you know, I'm going out fishing with my dad and my 16 foot aluminum boat, or or? Or? So you're talking nuclear submarines, and specifically nuclear submarines, which is a class of submarine which is not as common as other submarines. Yeah, so you're working nuclear submarines. There's a bazillion systems and forms of of equipment required to make these things be both boat, both submergeable and operate with a reactor Right. So where was your place in this madness?
Speaker 2:So I can't talk a ton about what I was doing Because they all sank. No, yeah, I'd say no one put my name on that, but um no, I mostly uh worked in the lab. So I'm working with uh welders, uh machinists and just doing a lot of the data recording and just kind of the oversight of the uh weld programs that we were running. Obviously they're not having interns do uh, if they've got a critical repair Like the real stuff, a critical repair where every time they cut it out it's $40,000. Um, I wasn't as close to those operations but uh got a lot of really good lab experience and honestly, being able, um, just that experience working with a wide team like it's so cool working with everybody from, um, a GED through a PhD and just kind of how to fit in on those kinds of teams.
Speaker 1:And well, and a big part of managing teams is, you know, allocating the skill sets in the right place, cause everyone's got skills right. It's just like where are those skills and how are they going to fit in in your work plan and making sure the right people are there at the right time Right Now. Then, as an intern, you don't get a lot of saying that really, it's like uh, you're going to do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're going to do this. I could not be happier to be doing that. This is, I mean, I remember the first time they took me through um, one of the production bays where they had a boat out of the water and I somebody had to like pull my jaw off the ground.
Speaker 1:Well, I you know, when I did my first tour of Seaspound, they had a full size freighter out of the water on dry dock. And you're looking up at this thing and you're like one tenth the size of the anchor and you're like what? And then the scope of metal work pops in, because, as a metal worker myself, you then you start to actually look at this thing as in terms of like work, you know, like man hours, materials like this is what's over a year to make a boat Like it's. You're looking two years off, a hundred people working on this thing full time, and that's nuts.
Speaker 2:It's insane to think about. But something I've really enjoyed from like the research side is like if you can make a couple of small improvements, the way that snowballs into uh like cost savings and quality improvements, like that, you can really kind of have an impact from the engineering side, which is what everybody wants to do, I think.
Speaker 1:So how long were you there in, in Submarine land?
Speaker 2:I spent two summers in Submarine land and um had the option to go back when I graduated but ended up sticking around OSU for a uh master's degree, also kind of in the shipbuilding space.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay. So what was your master's thesis on in the shipbuilding world?
Speaker 2:I was working for uh Carderock, which is the US Navy's kind of research lab. They're kind of the governing body for qualification. And then uh, austin, usa, down in Mobile Alabama, I was looking at a gas mark welding, kind of torch variant uh to see if they could get away from. I guess for aluminum let me back it up a little bit. Aluminum gas and lark welding um, pretty traditionally we'll use at least a little bit of helium in the shielding gas to um just get a better bead profile, particularly at the toes. It's a cleaner penetration.
Speaker 2:You know, you're getting a more concentric profile, but helium is crazy expensive anymore and almost gone, there's not a, it's a finite research, a resource.
Speaker 1:Excuse me, uh, that we are flying through from surgical equipment medical equipment, MRIs, use a ton of it, and I live in Saskatchewan in Canada, which has one of the last helium mines on the planet. I did not know that, yeah, yeah, and it's uh when they announced it opening a couple of years ago. We're like cool, Another mine. I live in like mining heavy province. Oh, another mine. And they're like, no, it's a helium mine. It's like, oh, okay, it's like it's like the last one, it's like whoa.
Speaker 2:That'll bring some money into the area. It is in such high demand, so it's expensive. We want to get away from using it but still get the same quality, and here's where the spin arc torch comes in.
Speaker 1:So it's uh because there's not a lot of options in the gas world aside from like there's not a lot that's completely inert like that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, there's not much you can do. So we wanted to match that quality with a hundred percent argon. So, um, my research professor, dr Dennis Harwig, I'd propose this work with a spin arc torch, which is where the actual contact tip will rotate as it moves down the joint and that kind of spreads out the heat to improve that um penetration profile. We found that for the penetration profile it worked really well. When we moved it on to um butt joints we found that it was just not quite as robust as it needed to be. Um give, my grad school got a little bit impacted by COVID, so that also. Um, it would have been nice to finish a couple of tests, but it's been almost um like eight months kicked out of the lab.
Speaker 2:So oh, yeah, right, right I was able to get some findings and um, just wasn't quite ready for that shipyard implementation.
Speaker 1:This spin arc concept like it's interesting to me, but the the welder in me wants to say that's not going to do much. Uh like articulation is articulation.
Speaker 2:But so it's moving really fast Like uh, the, the frequency is pretty high and really kind of had to fine tune that from getting the impact that you wanted to move in and around enough, but if you started going too high you'd throw it a part, you're throwing metal all over the table.
Speaker 1:Well, and aluminum is such a like once you break through the oxides, you're in liquid land, right. So there's a window there, and it's not as big a window as with other metals.
Speaker 2:No, it's not so. It it worked pretty well, but that is um. That was your, funded again Austin and Carter rock and um was an awesome way to uh kind of get that master's degree done right after school.
Speaker 1:So you got your master's degree now in pocket. Yeah, it sounds like it's post to post COVID, you know? And uh, then what happens?
Speaker 2:So I got really lucky that my grad school advisor works 50% at OSU, 50% at EBI and I had mentioned to him hey, I love living in Columbus, ohio. I have a fiance there now. Uh, I'd really like to stay in. So I started interning probably my last eight months of my master's over at EDI and really not doing any engineering work, just working as um kind of a welder and lab assistant type of thing yeah. Just packing up stuff building fixtures, grinding stuff. It was really good to get kind of up my manual skills.
Speaker 2:And then, um, once I finished up the master's, I ended up moving over, uh, to eat a guy full time.
Speaker 1:And what was that? What was that process?
Speaker 1:you know coming into EWI, as you know, fresh out of school, like you, have some experience but still you know you're pretty fresh, certainly fresh, right, and uh, and you're kind of walking into the team and I mean, first of all, ewi is fairly impressive laboratories. Thank you, right, like, and then. And then the other thing is the. The brain trust within those walls is also high, right. So how did you feel about that? Was it a little bit overwhelming, or were you in the this is, this is where I need to be kind of thing?
Speaker 2:I'll answer that and say both, because they were, uh, they they kind of make a habit of throwing people into the fire right when they start and they'll see can you do these, can you do this project? Where can you multitask between a couple of different things or can you not? And I was also really lucky that some people that were invested in me doing well there and kind of took the time and certainly moved slower than they would ever want have wanted to, to um, kind of coach me up and make sure that they were giving me the stuff that I needed, and following along and really understanding everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they weren't just saying, hey, go do this or hey, help me out with this.
Speaker 1:So like we're going to do this because and I just kind of laid the framework to me for me to start kind of going out and doing that on my own- so, with your experience that you had had with the shipbuilding and you know, even like working towards that and your masters as a as kind of a context of what the work you were doing, was that kind of the goal when they hired you, to be like, hey, you know, this is kind of what you've done. We have projects that are either coming up or on the go.
Speaker 2:That's where you need to go, definitely so, uh, ewi, especially when I started. It's moved around a little bit since then, but uh, when I started we had a hat, or we still do have a ton of uh. Us Navy shipbuilding work.
Speaker 2:So, having that experience and being in a shipyard, you definitely get an understanding that it is not like the lab at all, Like stuff has to be able to be done. The equipment will never be taken, taken care of like it is in the lab. You're fit up and just the welding conditions are suboptimal, to put it nicely. So that, um, kind of just having that background and thinking about that. And the qualification too, it's a really stringent qualification requirements. So working within that uh, Navy tech pub kind of mindset I think they saw as an asset.
Speaker 1:And what kind of qualifications are you talking about? Like, is there a whole separate cert world for for submarines or boats, or you?
Speaker 2:know. So the Navy, uh, the Navy in uh NAVSEE, which is uh Naval SEA, um something, something I'm going to butcher it.
Speaker 2:So I'm not even going to take a stab at it. I should know it. But they have qualification documents for the welding, the testing, the inspection, um, that are really stringent. So just you know, um, knowing that anything that's getting done in the lab will have to meet those requirements is an added challenge. And I guess we can't qualify stuff at EWI since we're not the shipbuilding, we're not the shipyard, but a lot of these Navy projects we wanna demonstrate the ability to qualify. So we'll run all those qualification tests, mechanicals, all the qualification inspection, to give these shipyards a good feeling that once they are in their lab and they're shipyard and they're either third party or whatever they gotta do Exactly, they'll be able to do that with some success.
Speaker 1:And what were some of the projects that you got to work on right off the top? Like, are we talking design? Are we talking new materials, new alloys, like all of the above, it sounds like.
Speaker 2:A good one I can talk about would be looking at different submerged arc welding variants. So add in just looking at multi-wire processes, single wire and just kind of grading it, cause it's not just the productivity improvements that you get, maybe to move into a three-wire sub arc, you also have to gauge that this can be a lot harder for an operator. There's going to be a bigger capital cost up front.
Speaker 1:So we just If something goes wrong, it goes wrong bad.
Speaker 2:It goes wrong a lot worse.
Speaker 1:So it's. I ran a two, so I ran a sub arc for years and we went to a two-wire cause some sales guy came by and was like you need to double your production with a second wire. It's that easy. Yeah, and here you go, and you know we're running it off big like 500 pound barrels of wire and I think it was, you know, 532 wire, two of them.
Speaker 2:Huge depositions.
Speaker 1:Right, and we were building up a big caster rolls for the steel mill, and, and it was such a struggle, dude, like we struggled and we struggled and so, like, in the end we figured out the fix, but not because of any. It was like trial and error, and how much thousands of dollars wasted during this trial and error time, cause what would happen is that the wires would pull towards each other. There was just a just a natural magnetic pull that these wires would slowly, as they got hotter, pull towards each other, and then they would arc and they would blow the whole head. And it was like $8,000 ahead or whatever. And after, like the third one blown in a week, it's like okay, what are we doing wrong?
Speaker 1:And then, finally it was, someone was like why don't we try running this on AC? And it was like both AC rerun and one AC lead AC trail, and that was the ticket, which was nice, cause we actually had a two power source setup that we had chained. It worked out, perfect. You unchain them and then you, it worked out, and that's not a trivial process in and of itself, no, and this is like the nineties man, like I mean things were no.
Speaker 1:No power wave manager. No, no, no. And it was a really good experience for me from a very simple on the floor like new product, supposed to be awesome, Doesn't work. Now at EWI, what you're doing is you're trying to stop that heartache from happening.
Speaker 2:Before they even make that cap. That's right. That's right, and not just looking at how easy is it to run, how much deposition rate can you run. We'll do stuff like structured blue light scans, like what is distorting the most Cause, especially on some of these thicker plate sub arc wells, it's really hard to straighten plates.
Speaker 1:Oh for sure, and the thicker it is, the more it moves.
Speaker 2:They are welded. So just just kind of, with that many balls in the air, how can we put all this information together and provide a company with a recommendation on what they should go with?
Speaker 1:Yeah, three wire. I don't know why. I've never even seen a three wires sub arc setup. Is it common now? Is that a thing everywhere, like I don't know if it's common, is there more than three wires of work?
Speaker 2:I'm learning right now we just got a four wire setup. Actually in our lab we don't have the three wire, we just jumped the four, but it's kind of a funky one. It's that new ESOP ice system. I don't know how much you've been about this. It's a tandem torch, so two wires through one contact tip.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Running off one power supply and they feed a cold wire through the middle. That kind of melts, the filler that melts between the two arcs. Okay. So it's you're getting your bunching up or punching up your deposition rate without changing your heat input.
Speaker 1:Right, but you're going to have a heat draw there.
Speaker 2:You will have a heat draw and they've got programs optimized for it and that cold wire feed. They'll let you adjust. So if you're, depending on where you're at, maybe you can back it off. You're filling a joint. If you need a bunch of fill, you can crank that all the way up. If you really just need a little bit to get this joint filled, you can kind of roll that cold wire back.
Speaker 1:So four wire. That's three wires. Okay, where's the fourth?
Speaker 2:I'd say your math is, your math is bought on. The fourth, one is just another traditional sub arc torch right in front. Okay, that can run in, can be synced up and run in tandem with.
Speaker 1:But offset, I'd imagine, on the puddle, or it would be like a deadly Offset. Just a little bit Okay.
Speaker 2:So that'll be your lead which you'll punch with the DC and then that back ice system, traditional run AC, to kind of give you that fill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Cause I have seen now that most multi wire systems do recommend AC, which we learned the hard way. But you know, but you don't get the heat with AC like it. I mean, no matter how you spin it, you don't get quite that punch in there. So, and it's, that's it. I need to see that I got a. I'm going to be in Buffalo. You said this is Columbus. Right, it is in Columbus. Dang it, I'm a full in December.
Speaker 2:I would say that's a cool time to be in Buffalo, but you guys are used to it up here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like well it'll be. It'll be way nicer there than from where I live.
Speaker 2:So people hate going up there. And then when you're like, oh, I don't want to go to Buffalo, you guys don't mind.
Speaker 1:No, I can't wait to invite people to Regina's and sketch one in the middle of winter. You, oh you guys will love it Minus 40, which is minus 40 Fahrenheit, it's like, I think that's the one.
Speaker 2:That's the levels out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 40 is 40. So have you ever experienced minus 40?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think so. I might've come close. I think it was maybe minus 20. The first time my parents took me skiing, but that was with windshield and yeah, oh yeah, we got to add windshield. That's a whole nother game?
Speaker 1:No, I have none, all right. Well, let's take a quick moment here for our sponsors because when I get back I want to hear kind of on what you know you take is on the conference here at Canwell, in in Moncton, and also your talks and what's going on going forward. So we'll be right back here on the CWB Association podcast. I'm here with Jim Hansen and don't go anywhere. Did you know that more than 80% of welders are unsatisfied with their current vendors?
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Speaker 1:Visit weld-readyca now to get Weld Ready, and that's no bull. And we are back here with Jim Hansen from EWI, who works in the Columbus Ohio office or lab research center what's the, whatever you wanna call it, and we were talking about, well, number one. He was teaching me about new subarcs, which not a lot of people get excited about subarcs, but I had to run one for like six years as a young apprentice and I at the time was like this is so boring, I hate this. But now, 20 years later, subarcs is making a huge comeback and I'm like I know how to operate those machines Like and what they do and how you know if you get porosity in subarc.
Speaker 2:You got some serious problems.
Speaker 1:You're grinding and gouging for the next day. Thank you very much. That pinhole is an inch deep.
Speaker 2:That's not a fun job.
Speaker 1:That is not a fun job, but the one that sometimes we have to learn to do. So you're at EWI, you're learning. At this point, you're kind of working with the team on what when you first started, like in terms of shipbuilding, or what was it that your first projects were about?
Speaker 2:Mostly shipbuilding and heavy industry, so a lot of equipment, sometimes equipment manufacturers, but really started off with shipbuilding. There's kind of two main programs that we really access that kind of research money to the Navy. We've got our NSRP panel projects, so those run at 150K one year duration. It's technology that's really close to being ready to get implemented and we just need to screen it, develop it a little bit more. Those are the smaller ones and that's really what I started out doing, as like I would be running the program, and then our Navy Mantec projects. These are multi-million dollar programs, multi-year, and with those I'd kind of start up as like a secondary engineer where I'd be kind of getting direction from someone who's far more experienced and just kind of help out where I could, mostly in the lab working with our team of technicians.
Speaker 1:So if you were to talk to a layman, someone who doesn't really know much about steel industry at a hardcore level, but say they're a welder or a work in manufacturing, and they were to ask is there a difference between the steel that's used on a ship versus the steel that is used, say, in a car or structural for a building? Is there, and what would it be?
Speaker 2:So structural for most parts of the boat there probably isn't a huge difference. You might get some a little bit more alloying with like an HSLA-65 as a steel that's commonly used.
Speaker 1:When you start moving to stuff like, I guess, more critical steel is, there might be some more alloying, maybe a little difference with how it welds, but Is weighted an issue when you're looking at boats, like you look at that and be like I have to go with light materials because floating, you know, or because, like I, work in mining. So it's always like we're looking for the most corrosive resistant materials. And then everyone jumped on the stainless steel train and then the duplexes and all this madness. But stainless is so heavy and expensive that those costs and weights kind of limited the use of the material. So it was like a big curve where it was like oh everyone's on stainless steel.
Speaker 1:That didn't work, you know. So, like when you look at boats, what are the materials or the alloys that you gravitate towards?
Speaker 2:That's another kind of interesting one, just because there's so many different needs from a ship because, it's got to be light so it can go fast, but it's also got a bunch of seabed on it that need to be protected.
Speaker 1:So there's and strong enough to like what if you hit something or you know.
Speaker 2:So there's just a lot of kind of competing interests and I mean I can't speak as much for the Canadian Navy but I know the United States will build out of aluminum steels. So there's a pretty wide range depending on what that vessel needs to accomplish or what the prospective mission is for that class of boat.
Speaker 1:Do you go to the Marine conferences ever Like? Have you been to like a Meritac or some of the? I know in Canada we have two large ones. There's one actually this week in Vancouver shipbuilding conference.
Speaker 2:Sorry to make you be here, but I am very happy to be invited up here to Moncton to speak, but I've been to the AWS Shipbuilding and Aluminum Conference that was out in San Diego two years ago. Wasn't able to make it to Seneami this year. That's another Marine architect and engineers I think, but those are the two big ones. And then within the US Shipbuilding Committee in particular, I think I believe it's pretty open as far as registration goes. But the National Shipbuilding Research Program they have like an all panel meeting and then I am kind of EWIs correspondent for their welding technology panel.
Speaker 3:So that's how a lot of those ideas for those projects get brought up?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because that's going to be my question. It's like what's the technology transfer, the IP transfer, the intelligence transfer, like in this industry, like the shipbuilding industry, like? I've worked with C-Span, irving Heddle and I sit on a couple of Marine advisory committees for welding and it's a whole other set of rules, different set of qualifications. I was at a conference and they're showing an all aluminum tugboat that's electric, like, not like a completely electric all aluminum tugboat, and in my head none of those words mean tugboat. Like how is this thing lighter than anything, all electric and pulling, still has the payload? That's right, it still has the payload to be a tugboat Like. That's kind of like the opposite of what a tugboat should be in my mind, but it obviously works and obviously it's out there. So that really made me start thinking.
Speaker 1:That example being like well, how hardcore. Like do these do they get on? The weird spectrum of design, like are people making the Lorian tugboats like complete stainless steel and it will never rust? Like because sea water, salt water, like are these do you guys get to play with some of those? Like extremes, the design side?
Speaker 2:not really no, which is too bad, cause you can really Get weird, get incredibly weird, but we're more looking at stuff that on occasionally the Man-Tex will get kind of like a moon shot that's of ways from being implemented, but a lot of the stuff that I see day to day is stuff that's close. Maybe it's been shown in other industries to be successful, like I can talk about a shipbuilding project we're doing now. One of the filler wire manufacturers has seen some good luck in another industry with this reduced silica collector that they have. Clean and silica is a pain for you when you're doing multi-pounds and all this, just bury them.
Speaker 1:No one will know.
Speaker 2:The X-ray always finds.
Speaker 1:What's that black spot? I don't know. We'll put that there.
Speaker 2:But cleaning the silica is a pain, either multi-pass prior to paint. So we're looking at this reduced silica electrode to see if, hey, it's worth in another industry, can it work for the shipyards? So we'll develop parameters for it and then do a bunch of mechanical and metallurgical tests to see how it stacks up against, let's say, a legacy 70S wire.
Speaker 1:And that stuff, like the research side and it's like there always feels like there's a disconnect between welders and engineers just at a base level. Just saying welders don't really speak on the same language as engineers, even though they're working literally on the same project. Like this is like we need each other. Now you're kind of past that point. You're not the engineer at the shop, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're not the engineer that's building the blueprints and putting the weld symbols for the fabricator. You're in a space where you get to kind of play.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're eye-lean on our welding techs so heavy. It's like you guys have been doing this, for I'm pretty young. They've been staring at these arcs for a long time, so just being able to work through these products, what do you see? I'm seeing this. Does that make sense? Are you seeing the same thing? And then turn this knob, adjust this up? And it's like, oh, there goes all my problems. So it's really cool just to kind of have that full, comprehensive team, like I was saying earlier, ged to PhD.
Speaker 2:It's really cool to be working with everybody.
Speaker 1:It's like every welder looks at a box of electrodes and sees the recommended app readings and he's like who came up with those? Those are never correct. Some engineer sitting around? These are never the right answer. I'm going to pick a number outside of that because it's probably better and that's exactly what I want to know.
Speaker 2:What should I be running out?
Speaker 1:of and a welder is only going to be the one that wouldn't know how to tell you right. So now in these projects that you work with EWI, when you come to a conference like Canweld, are you talking about stuff that's project related for you from an EWI standpoint, or just from a purely academic engineer angle, of stuff that you want to teach other colleagues about things that you know?
Speaker 2:So that's a mixed bag, because sometimes there will be technology areas where we're developing, we're seeing good results and we really want to get it out there. And that's where someone a little bit of you come down and say, like Canweld, one of our managers, like you've been doing a lot of shipbuilding work, we've been seeing some good results for this process. I think it'd be really good to kind of get in front of a new audience that's shipbuilding certainly has a heavy industry component and discuss it and other ones, because we are paying attention to what conferences are happening. There will be work that I'm doing on the set. I think this would be really applicable. Maybe it's a project, maybe it's internal research that we're doing on our own, but I'd like to go talk about this and see if we can get the drum up business or just on. I mean, sometimes people come up after a talk and be like, why aren't you looking at it this way on some internal research? And it's like, wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:Why am I?
Speaker 2:not doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, bouncing good ideas off smart people is a really good way to make better ideas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been great to talk to, even just after speaking this morning. Talk to some other people that are like, why aren't you looking at this, like have you thought about fixing that issue? You were talking about this way, and it's just. It's awesome to be around a lot of smart people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now what was your first presentation today? You said you have two, so what was the one you did already.
Speaker 2:So the first one was the Buried Arc Gas Spinal Arc Welding for Improves Shipbuilding Quality. That was an OTC process variant allowing us to go to a wide diameter, thick diameter electrodes on weld up to a half an inch thick in a single pass. So we're able to really boost productivity while still getting a visually acceptable weld, and mechanicals have been pretty good so far. We've had some sharpie concerns on Boiling rates too high, or what?
Speaker 2:It's just, it's a hot process and we're starting to investigate a new electrode that'll give us that better sharpie properties at the higher heat input. So that's some research we're doing More silicon no, Dang it no. You didn't need a jackhammer to get those off.
Speaker 1:Now, what do you mean by buried arc? For the people that are listening, Like what? Does that use a buried arc and does that mean I'm welding underground or Almost, no, not quite.
Speaker 2:So the buried arc you can run. This is a specific power supply to let you run the buried arc. But buried arc has kind of been a colloquial term for when your electrode goes down to the workpiece and that arc is really beneath the top of the plates that you're welding.
Speaker 1:So like going into a groove, for example.
Speaker 2:Yeah, going into a groove, we can run square butts as well.
Speaker 1:But you're not touching the edges, you're hitting the bottom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're hitting the bottom, and the way that OTC is doing that is through precise wire feed and waveform control, it's letting you run these thick electrodes and get these I mean relatively thick plates done in a single pass.
Speaker 1:I'll think of an electrode we're talking here on. This is a wire fed process. Right, it's a wire fed process.
Speaker 2:We can run both 0.5.2 and 0.6.2, and that's in inches.
Speaker 1:And that's not crazy, that's not crazy.
Speaker 2:That's not crazy, especially it's, I mean, sub arc background. You just do that kind of wire diameter. Yeah, we haven't run one-eighth yet, but but I mean lots of like.
Speaker 1:if you look at the iron workers, they're running all five-two now out on the field for their flux cores, because while you just have more flux, so yeah, just run better.
Speaker 2:You're getting that protection out in the field.
Speaker 1:But for a solid wire people don't generally get much bigger than 0.45, unless they have to, unless they're like cladding or build up or something and they're machining it off because of the heat concerns, like you're piling in a freaking ton of amps.
Speaker 2:It's, and you can only run this very dark in the flat position because it'd be raining metal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd be like trying to pull. You know, make water stick to the wall, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just fall right out of there. But flat position it's worked well, really well, honestly.
Speaker 1:And now this wire that you're practicing with. Why would you just not? Or what would be the benefit you're looking to gain from not just running an 0.5 to you know ER70S-6 at ridiculous speed? I can crank it to ridiculous speed. Sure, what's the gain that you're trying to find?
Speaker 2:just getting a really the welds come out beautifully. We were able to do no for a three-accent stick plate. We can do no edge prep and just do that square butt joint.
Speaker 1:And just go.
Speaker 2:And just go and it's really resistant. We worked on developing start-stop procedures and just a little bit.
Speaker 1:I didn't think about that one, though, because a little hard wire is a crater hard.
Speaker 2:Little bit of feathering with the grinder. Looking at the root you'd have no idea it got restarted the top side. You'd gotta take it down a little bit just because it will kind of hump up where you're restarting. But it's adaptable. It's in variations in the plate thickness. That's another place for that, because it'll run like a keyhole almost with that thick electrode. There's so much amperage.
Speaker 1:They're just eating up the material apparent material.
Speaker 2:And that kind of lets it be flexible over the joint prep and the just variations that you're going to see in a shipbuilding environment. Very interesting.
Speaker 1:I should have gone to your presentation, but I've been working. I'm stuck working all the time. I never get to go to the presentations. I wish I could, so OK, so that's interesting, I already have my mind thinking about it. So what's the second presentation you're doing? Is that tomorrow or later today?
Speaker 2:That is going to be tomorrow afternoon and that presentation I'm giving for a colleague. They were running around this week we're originally supposed to make it and then no longer could due to some customer conflict. So I'll be talking about a weld cooling rate monitoring system for mechanized pipe welding. So this came out of an oil and gas pipeline failure actually, where contractors were out of their heat input range and trying on the high side. On the high side trying to up productivity because they were coming in Long some big deadlines and within two weeks they had catastrophic failures. So a couple of companies approached us and said we want almost a go or no-go system where we can capture the cooling rate of the weld and just kind of interface with this mechanized system and if it's within the cooling rate range where it needs to get those required properties, give you green light, and if it's outside of the range it'll kind of throw a red light in an air and say, hey, we probably have to dig this out and give it another go.
Speaker 1:And you're looking for and this is both sides like if your interpasses are too low or too high, or are you just worried about getting too hot more than anything?
Speaker 2:Mostly worried about getting too hot, and it's not as much the feedback loop that we're working on with this project. It's being able to get either an IR camera or a spot sensor in these narrow groove OK, tightly not, so that's been the biggest thing, and also with the blood. Inferred camera.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:A lot of the IR cameras' surface condition is a huge factor. Yeah, because they reflect and you've got reflections on the inside of the joints. So just kind of one finding the right sensor and two being able to calibrate it and use that data to.
Speaker 1:And not have like data sets from like a little bit of spatter or a grind spot where that was shining Exactly.
Speaker 2:You can completely throw it off.
Speaker 1:So being able to get enough data points where you can average and then and those IR cameras basically, in my experience, suck to work on aluminum because of its reflectivity Like it's almost impossible, and there's so much to kind of that emissivity, to get that dialed in where it'll be useful.
Speaker 2:So we're plunging thermocouples all over the place just trying to make sure the numbers are right. What happened?
Speaker 1:to crayons and tiger torches.
Speaker 2:It was also much easier. Are those days gone? Ok, so, being a shipbuilding guy, I was around Temstix, abonja. I don't know, as far as the oil and gas goes, how much they're using them.
Speaker 1:Well, where I was it was like it was actually like you have to have the right sets of Temstix on you to go to this job. You could be, yeah, and you'd be monitoring after every pass with Temstix we would do Xs. It was actually a neat trick. We would do Xs across joints but like six inches wide, like big Xs, so that you could actually see like that gradient of the melting, the gradient of the melting of your Temstix. So it would also give you heat affected zone kind of idea of how wide your heat's getting. And it was a neat trick that we would use. And then it was just different Temstix. But obviously all of that takes away from productivity.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and these are usually working with contractors where there might be a language barrier, experience barrier, experience barrier. They're usually people that you don't have a awesome work or not awesome work relationship. But maybe your first time on this job with this, it's new, exactly so, being able just to have it integrated with the mechanized system and just be continuously giving you that feedback loop, then a yes, no, and how mechanized are we talking, like on the gun, on a pipe pod, on your?
Speaker 2:helmet. We want it on the tractor. So maybe a little On a tractor coming around, because usually I don't know if it's buggo or what tractor brand they're using, but it's all mechanized pipe welding, so they want to kind of mount it just a little bit behind, and again things change as you're going on the top side versus the bottom side.
Speaker 1:So just being able to take all that in consideration and build something that's robust enough to go out in the field, so if you were, if this wasn't your presentation to give sounds like you know it pretty well, Were you a part of this? Did you work on this at all at EWI? No, no, or was it like an email being like? Good luck man.
Speaker 2:About two weeks ago the customer conflicts came up and so I just kind of you had to learn pretty quick, yeah, I mean we do a bunch of similar stuff with the arc welding anyway, especially for the additive work. So it wasn't too far of a jump to be able to come up and chat about that as well.
Speaker 1:And how have you found the can weld to be? This is your first can weld. This is one of our small, more regional can welds, which I love. These ones there's always a thought of like bigger, bigger, better, better. You know, and it's cool that we do big giant can welds, but I like these more, you know, kind of community driven can welds.
Speaker 2:I don't think I'd call it small.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I go. We're almost at, I think, 200 people here.
Speaker 2:So I've been really impressed with the attendance at the technical questions. I mean, I probably had eight questions this morning, so it's really nice not to just go up and talk and then sit back down having no idea what people were caring, thank you. So it's. I think the questions have been great. I have seen already seen some excellent presentations. There's a couple this afternoon and tomorrow. I'm looking forward to catching I mean say it's that certainly a value addon? Good, I've been impressed with the level of the work that is getting spoken about.
Speaker 1:Awesome. And what about? Kind of an obtuse question but like, how do you feel about this relationship with CWB? Like, did you ever even hear about CWB before? All of a sudden it's like hey, we're brothers now you know. Or was it something that you had? You know, I'm across CWB, perhaps in the codes and standards world, or was this all just new to you and you had to start picking it up and figuring out?
Speaker 2:This was all brand new. I mean, most of the codes and standards work and the education was only I'd only experienced with the Americans in the United States side of it and like with shipping.
Speaker 1:Aren't you working with Lloyds, two Lloyds registries? Is that in there?
Speaker 2:That's not in your world, all Navy shipbuilding, so it's all kind of governed by that tech and the the Nazi documents, but it's been. I was surprised at first but it's been awesome so far. I mean, we're seeing the results from the investment and research money in our lab down in Columbus already Just things that we're able to purchase. Work that we are able to do that we probably wouldn't otherwise be able to has been. Just people are excited about having CWB and EWI. It's a strategic alliance, yeah, yeah, yeah, the alliance the official term, but I mean everything. I call it the new order.
Speaker 2:The new order conflements itself very well just between and we're seeing that work already. Like I was up in Vancouver and Victoria earlier this year, through John Vieth at CDBB connected us with some people at the shipyards C-Span or different shipyard C-Span and Vanship. We were able to go present up there and actually I think we'll have some work, hopefully soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and those are impressive shipyards, boy, Beautiful, clean, really impressive. Did you see the training center and lab they have at C-Span? Did they take you there? Unbelievable? Yeah, I was like man, this is better than a National Research Council lab Like this is crazy.
Speaker 2:Very well done. It was just awesome to see the Canadian shipbuilding, what you all are doing up here.
Speaker 1:Well, is there any differences that you see now that you're in the Canadian market? You know, as you're seeing Canadian companies, you're seeing kind of our infrastructure which, yes, we're both in North America, yes, we have very similar systems, but I feel like I see differences in how businesses are run anywhere in the world, really Like everyone's got a kind of their own flavor, right. Do you see any like, even as Canadians or as Canadian business.
Speaker 2:I really respect the desire to keep research money in Canada because that's been probably the biggest hurdle that we've had is convincing someone to work with an American company when there's A Canadian option. Yeah, that money could be spent in Canada. That's another place for the CDBB. Affiliation really helps us out because it kind of gives us that credibility and understanding that we're not just an American company Like we have yeah just going to take your business. Yeah, we're building roots in this country and have a good kind of partnership with you all.
Speaker 1:What about your thoughts on Canadians?
Speaker 2:Very friendly. I've had a, so actually my future in laws are Canadian. My future father-in-law is from Toronto, so they've been up to. Canada a couple of times. They live in the States. They live in Cleveland area.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love Cleveland. I'm a Browns frown. Oh sorry, what are you talking about? We just beat that friend.
Speaker 2:No, I absolutely love coming up to Canada. I did some backpacking up in Algonquin north of Toronto last year, beautiful.
Speaker 1:You're going to have to come to Saskatchewan sometime. Absolutely, come to summer. If you don't like the cold, don't even bother, I don't mind the cold, but I think I take the summer.
Speaker 2:We got beautiful lakes.
Speaker 1:I keep telling other people from EWI I say come to my part of the country. We don't get advertised ever, but it's beautiful.
Speaker 2:I'd love to Tell some project work and I will be able to find a way to get up there Mining.
Speaker 1:We're mining. Who's the mining person on your team, or a DWI?
Speaker 2:As far as on the arc welding side, it's probably me as far as heavy industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's a lot of subarc work that goes down in my province because a lot of we also have a steel mill, so a lot of it's maintenance and rebuild of giant machinery, so which is kind of subarc 101. They need four wires.
Speaker 2:We are. We are the place down in.
Speaker 1:Colorado. I don't think I've seen a four wire set up. I don't think I've seen a three wire set up. So I might have to introduce you to some people in my neighborhood. I love it, all right. So what do you? Got planned for the, for the kind of the rest of the week, the rest of the year. What's going on with you know, with with Jim in in his world?
Speaker 2:Got a couple of really exciting projects that we're kicking off soon in Columbus. I'm actually missing the meeting today, not, not, not for this, just it was a full day kickoff. So just exciting work and I think it's going to be a really busy next couple of years at EWI, just with the amount of work we want to get done. Then I think we'll be pushing arc welding automation, that arc additive stuff. We're really going to see some, some big leaves, at least in our personal capabilities that you've got here in the next two, three years.
Speaker 1:That's exciting and I'm glad to be a part of it, and I know CWB. We're ramping up for our next few years too, because we're on the up and up as well, right, so you know this. It's definitely exciting to see the paths that you know both Canadian American companies are going through it now and the ones that are trying to be more proactive I hate that word, but you know like more forward thinking in terms of staying at the front edge of that that technology lead Yup, because that's if you ain't first your last kind of world, it's hard to catch up, and it's not just the technology.
Speaker 2:We're. I think we're going to see big differences in health standards and welding here in the next couple years. You're also you're starting to see it happen in Europe and it's going to be over here.
Speaker 1:I was just at a conference where it's already like we we got presented to us from Ireland and Switzerland and the whole like policy down changes they're making with industry or it's like not a choice anymore. This is like government policy and some of it's already coming into Canadian policy. It's already working its way in. So I went for some of those updates and I came back to see that you've been reading like we got some work to do.
Speaker 2:I was like cause. It will be here before you know it, and if we're not ready, it's going to be a slog catching up and just getting everything lined up, but I think we're putting ourselves in a good position. Awesome, you're out doing research we're starting to look at with your fume capture, fume analysis.
Speaker 1:And hydrogen. Lots of work in the hydrogen spectrum too.
Speaker 2:So Now, that's one I can't speak about, yeah.
Speaker 1:I can. Nobody's pretty cool. There's lots of cool stuff coming out and we're making strategic partnerships really around the world for some of this stuff. So there's some really, really amazing, intelligent people around the world, and I think that that's kind of the biggest mindset change that we've seen with companies like CWB and EWI just in general, that it's not just about us, it's not just about like we're going to do this. It's there's times you have to reach out and be like okay, who else out there has got kind of the same end game and what can we do together, you know?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's a fun time to be a welding engineer. There's a lot of cool stuff going on.
Speaker 1:All right, Jim. Well, thank you very much. Is there any shout outs or any hello's you want to say to anybody while you got the mic time I?
Speaker 2:don't think so. If anyone needs assistance with their arc welding engineering, research and development, be please give me a call at EWI and we'd be happy to help you out with your technical challenges.
Speaker 1:All right, perfect. That's wonderful. And on his behalf I'll say a shout out to his fiance and his her parents from Toronto, because I'm sure he meant to, and of course, oh yeah, my wife too, right.
Speaker 2:All business for me today.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. Thank you for being on the show Absolutely, and for all the people that have been downloading and listening. I'm not sure how many podcasts we're going to do here at Canwell it's. I'm running the show out here, so I'm very busy, but we did want to sneak this one in. This was actually supposed to happen in Chicago.
Speaker 2:I ducked you in Chicago and you get down the Texas for a site visit.
Speaker 1:So we got this one and we were probably going to do at least one or two more this week. But uh, can well has been super fun. And if you haven't been to a can welled next year, june 11th to 13th in Toronto is the next can weld. So make sure you're there, uh, to catch us, and that's uh, that's the big one. So you want to be there where we're there with fab tech and it's I think it's five to 6,000 people coming to that one. You definitely want to be a part of that one. So, uh, stay tuned and keep listening. Thanks for downloading and sharing.
Speaker 3:You've been listening to the CWB association welding podcast with Max. If you enjoyed what you heard today, rate our podcast and visit us at CWB associationorg to learn more. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions on what you'd like to learn about in the future. Produced by the CWB group, presented by Max, this podcast serves to educate and connect the welding community. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.