You may or may not know about Tesla, the swankiest 100% electric car on the market. They started up production a couple of months ago:

San Carlos, Calif. – (March 17, 2008) — Regular production of the 2008 Tesla Roadster commenced today, marking an historical milestone for Tesla Motors and a watershed in the development of clean, zero-emissions vehicles.

First unveiled as a prototype on July 19th, 2006, the revolutionary Tesla Roadster generated an extraordinary response from people everywhere who were inspired by the vision that beautiful, high performance cars could generate zero-emissions and burn no oil.

Here, Tesla’s engineer explains to Inside Line how the much anticipated electric roadster works:

And now they’ve opened their first store in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago. I can only wonder how long it is before our own Joe Welder trades in his Prius (and his house) for a Tesla– it even comes in Arc-Zone Orange!

Tom OLeary, General Manager of the new Tesla store writes on his blog:

The Tesla Roadster is a revolutionary car and our Tesla Stores will be no less revolutionary as an automotive retail experience….. continue reading at Tesla Motors–>

(more…)

This is a nice looking bike, and best of all proceeds support the Motorcycle Hall of Fame
The raffle winner will be chosen in a random drawing during AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio, in July of 2008.

Proceeds from the drawing benefit the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum in Pickerington, Ohio.
Full details on the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum website–>

Lisa in Alameda emailed Arc-Zone.com with the following question:

I have a Miller Dialarc welder with a Weldcraft water cooled torch. I have been hooked up to city water and it’s worked fine for years. But I am moving my business to Klamath Falls, Oregon and my shop will get below freezing at night so I’ll need a self contained unit to cool my torch. Could you send me more information on just the cooling system/cool kit without the torch kit included as I have that….

Since Lisa already has the water-cooled torch, getting her set up with a water cooler should be pretty simple; all she’ll need is the cooler itself.

The water cooler that comes with the Cool Kit is our Tig-er cooler. It retails for about $500 plus shipping. It is a nice little cooler that runs 2 gallons. It’s solid and compact and would be a great addition to a small weld shop.

Lisa may need a water hose, and AW-431 fittings. She’ll also need the coolant which you can get from us, or from your local welding supply shop.

The Lincoln Electric® Welding School — an industry leader in welding education– offers courses on the various types of arc welding methods to educate and train students in arc welding safety, processes, techniques and Lincoln® products as well as qualification and certification programs.

Courses cover basics in: plate and sheet metal, pipe welding, plasma, TIG, MIG and Flux Cored Arc Welding…. and advanced courses are offered as well. Check out the full line up of welding classes at the Lincoln Electric website.

They even offer a special Motorsports Welding School, a five day technical program focusing on basic motorsports materials (aluminum and stainless steel) and applications (GMAW, GTAW, Oxy fuel, and plasma cutting). A basic and an advanced course is offered.

The newest addition to the welding school is a welding and safety maintenance course for repair welding applications.

Designed to instruct welders in the automotive repair, construction and maintenance fields, the course demonstrates and instructs students in various welding processes including stick (SMAW), MIG (GMAW) and TIG (GTAW) welding, as well as oxyfuel cutting.
(more…)

If you can swing a trip to Europe this Fall, you may want to check out the world’s leading technology exhibition for sheet metal working.

A little late in Fall to catch Oktoberfest (September 20th through October 5th) the exhibit will be held this year from 21-25 October 2008 in Hanover, Germany. Five months ahead of the show, 1,350 exhibitors from 37 Countries have already booked their stand space. This time, exhibiting companies will present their products and systems for the different technology sectors of sheet metal working in eight exhibition halls, on a net area of 85,000 m2. This means that EuroBLECH 2008 has grown by some 10,000 m2 against the previous event in 2006 and will be the biggest show ever.

“In particular, the areas of separation technology, flexible sheet metal working technology, joining technology and tool technology have expanded considerably“, says Nicola Hamann, Exhibition Director, on behalf of the organisers, Mack Brooks Exhibitions. “But we can also report a growth in the other technology sectors of EuroBLECH. Overall, this reflects the situation of this industry sector which, after years of prosperity, is still on the upswing.”

(more…)

Those of you of a certain age will remember that 70s era jingle from Burger King. At Arc-Zone.com we get special requests fairly often. And we’re pretty good at getting our customers what they want.

Case in point, Armando in Texas writes:

I need a TIG torch Package WP-26, but needs to be 75′ long, include a torch and hand-held amperage control and a cable cover to be used on a Miller Synchrowave 250.

Please quote and time of delivery

Although the WP-26 TIG Torch package from Weldcraft does not come with a 75′ Cable, and you can cobble together 75′ worth of cable, a better solution is our custom-length cables. Turnaround time is generally 5-7 days. You’ll still have to put together two cable covers, but that won’t affect performance in the least.

The Miller Synchrowave 250 has a threaded stud connection for the TIG torch, rather than the DINSE style plugs more common in newer machines so we recommended an upgrade. With a 45V62 Power Cable Adapter, he could adapt his machine to accept a TIG Torch with a DINSE connector. The benefit being that you can easily switch out one TIG Torch for another. Also, you can standardize all your machines and torches to one connector so that any torch you have can go on any machine– a great benefit for a company that needs be as flexible as possible.

But before we could put together a realistic quote for Armando we needed to know which hand held amperage control he wanted– at Arc-Zone.com we offer two different styles of hand held amperage controls: one with a side-to-side (east-west) dial, and one with an in-line (north-south) rotary motion control.

Once we clarified exactly what he needed, we were able to put together a quote, with a realistic delivery date… special orders really don’t upset us.

If the upcoming American Welding Society conference isn’t your cup of Joe, maybe the Ink-N-Iron Festival is for you:

June 6-8 aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif.

The best tattoo artists in the world and a series of additional events will make this 2008 edition a hit. There will be 280 artists from 30 States and 25 Countries representing all the tattoo styles pricking away with their machines in an exciting atmosphere, where a car show and music become an integral part of the event, mingling with the artistic expressions of the artists at work. This convention will be both a sort of art gallery and community festival.

Jim Watson, aka Joe Welder will be heading up to check out the Car Show.

The car show is for Pre-63 hot rods, kustoms, classics and vintage motorcycles– vehicles that are nostalgic in appearance. ABSOLUTELY NO high tech street rods, tubbed rear ends, fiberglass, billet aluminum, mini or monster trucks, muscle cars,or foreign cars allowed.

Check out last year’s show online –>

Automatic welding, for which the equipment requires little or no observation or manual adjustment, has enabled industry to dramatically accelerate output and increase quality. This conference covers new technologies in automatic controls, training and management innovations, and automation breakthroughs for the latest welding processes, including friction and thermal stir welding, hot-wire tungsten arc, laser/GMAW hybrid welding, as well as automation technologies for traditional processes, such as submerged arc.

May 13-14, 2008 ­ New Orleans, Louisiana

Register Online Today.

Conference Sessions Include:

• The Welder Shortage
• Who Will We Train?
• Welding Automation – Solutions to Common Design & Application Challenges
• Real-Time Quality Monitoring Using Data Fusion Techniques
• Innovations in Robotic Welding
• Laser Hybrid Welding – What, Why, Where and How
• Magnetic Pulse Welding – Automating the Next Generation of Welding
• Design for Manufacturing with Robotic Welding
• Understanding the Nature of Hazardous Welding Fumes in the Workplace and Steps that Can Be Taken to Reduce Exposures
• Innovations in Submerged Arc Welding
• Basic Control of Hot-Wire Gas Tungsten Arc Welding for Procedure Development and Production Applications
• Friction Stir Welding of Littoral Combat Ship Deckhouse Structure
• The Impact of Fiber Lasers on the Material Processing Market
• Thermal Stir Welding

Conference Schedule Details Available Here.

I’ve said it before but I love this industry and feel blessed that I’m able to meet so many interesting people and learn about what they are doing with metal fabrication.

I got a call from a Greg — he was in need of some technical info — specifically why his TIG hoses popped, and what he can do to keep it from happening. The power cable burst just outside of the handle. “I repaired it with some tubing, heat shrink etcetera, and it just popped again and started leaking,” he said.

His local supplier’s suggestion was to buy a whole new torch package — which he did– but that did not solve the problem. I talked him through the details of his TIG set up, specifically his connections to and from the power supply and the water cooler. I concluded that his coolant pump needed to be replaced.

We always have PROCON® pumps on hand and all the mounting hardware to connect directly to the welding industries most popular water coolers (from manufacturers like Bernard, Dynaflux and ITW). We also offer a nice refurbished coolant pump. It is much simpler, efficient and cost effective than trying to repair a pump yourself. Buy a refurbished pump, with all the fittings and mounting hardware and when you return your old pump core, we give you a 25.00 core credit!

Greg was relieved that we found the problem and I said we can ship your pump to you and you’ll have it tomorrow. “I need it today I got a job to do,” he said, then added, “and I want to come up and check you guys out!”

Turns out Greg is Greg Deering President of Deering Banjo Company located in Spring Valley, California about 40 miles from us.

We had a nice visit comparing notes about our early days as a start up company and how, due to the web we have connected with so many interesting people!

Deering Banjos “The Great American Banjo Company” is the premier manufacturer of banjos. These finely crafted instruments are played by some the best musicians worldwide. Obviously there is a lot of woodwork involved and apparently some of the brasswork is TIG welded! Check out the factory here: