Since Arc-Zone is based in sunny San Diego, California, the only snow we get stays in the mountains, where it belongs.  We’d much prefer to surf in the morning and ski or snowboard at night.  San Diegans are generally peeved if the temperature drops below 65.  The worst we get is probably some rain that most people elsewhere would refer to as “light drizzle”.  But still, you never know when some showshoes may come in handy! Check out these custom fabbed snowshoes from Jake Thamm in Colorado:

By Eric Lundin

You purchase raw material.  You cut it, you bend it, you weld it, maybe you even coat it.  You make the best components you can, ship them to your customers, and hope to earn an honest day’s wages for an honest day’s work.  If you’re an OEM, you do much the same thing, but you ship complete products.  Either way, you probably don’t expect to win awards for your work, do you?

Jake Thamm didn’t start his fabricating venture expecting to win awards, but indeed he did.  An avid outdoorsman and entrepreneur, he ran across a unique snowshoe several years ago.  He tracked down the manufacturer, purchased the design, co-founded the Crescent Moon® Snowshoe Co., and in a few years increased the sales of the product tenfold.  And the snowshoe won a couple of awards from outdoor recreation magazines.

CONTINUE READING OVER AT THE FABRICATOR – >

And if you’re the next Jake Thamm looking for TIG parts or torches, or tungsten electrodes for your TIG applications, be sure and check out Arc-Zone for all your welding accessory needs.

Lance Hindmarsh used the lack of business around during the recession as inspiration to form a business of his own: Hindmarsh Engineering Services, and he hasn’t looked back since!

Hindmarsh Engineering Services: Metal skills sparks business

Thursday, 25 February 2010

Lance Hindmarsh knows his way around a piece of metal.

For the Dayboro resident, being handy with his hands has led to him running his own business, Hindmarsh Engineering Services.

“I’ve been a fitter and turner for 20 or 30-odd years,” Lance said.

“I was contracted to Top Taste Bakeries, they used to ring me for equipment maintenance and repairs.

“But when the recession really started to hit I lost the contract, and a lot of companies were the same, so basically I was at home and decided I would keep it (my services) going … and keep it local.

“Even as a kid I repaired go-karts and motorbikes and, living on a farm, basically you did it all yourself. So I guess I just had a knack for it (metal work and machinery repairs) from when I was little and I was always going to go that way.”

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

Scrap metal doesn’t ever go to waste at Wagner Companies — instead, the employees are using their free time to transform these bits and pieces into beautiful works of art.

Metal manufacturing workers use talents to transform scraps into art

By Rick Barrett of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Feb. 8, 2010

When a piece of scrap metal falls to the factory floor at Wagner Companies, employee James Woggon may be close behind, snapping it up as material for his artwork.

So when thousands of small metal rings were going to be scrapped, Woggon used them – and a chair from the company cafeteria – to create a funky piece of patio furniture.

It was strictly for fun. Yet the talents of Woggon and fellow employee Jason Scott have not been lost on their employer, which manufactures things such as hand railings and snowplow parts. The two were hired as metal fabricators, an unglamorous job that often involves making thousands of parts in a repetitive fashion. But when work slows down, Woggon and Scott use their artistic talents in the factory.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

Terex Simplicity’s recent profitable months have turned out to mean good news as well for the welding students at neighboring schools.

Donation of equipment welds together knowledge for students

By SEAN ELY, Argus-Press Staff Writer
Monday, February 1, 2010 10:17 AM EST

Terex Simplicity’s recent sales increases prompted the company to purchase new welding equipment to further improve their business.

That couldn’t have been better news for both Byron and Ovid-Elsie high schools.

“We had a number of pieces of welding equipment on reserve as backups, so we decided to find a home for them,” said Keith Shivnen, Terex general manager. “We reached out to the local schools to boost and supplement their classes.”

The high schools’ industrial arts and welding programs received the massive MIG and stick Lincoln welding machines, valued at about $500 apiece with Terex maintenance supervisor Neil Marshall coordinating pick up and delivery. Ovid-Elsie received eight machines while Byron requested two.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

I often wish when I’m stuck in rush hour traffic, that my car would suddenly sprout wings and fly over all the heads of those other unassuming drivers. But I’m not Brady McCormick, and my car can’t fly.

But his – well, with just a few adjustments, it’s more of a possibility than you might think.

In North Kitsap, Turning Old Cars Into New Planes

By GENE YOACHUM FOR THE KITSAP SUN

Brady McCormick has his eyes on the skies.

The machine shop owner sees an opportunity looming in building experimental aircraft power plants out of 40-year-old Corvair automobile engines.

McCormick, 42, said the recent announcement that Seattle-based Boeing Co. is opening a plant in South Carolina instead of Puget Sound “creates a vacuum’’ for aircraft manufacturing locally.

“Now’s my chance to fill that vacuum,” he said, tongue planted firmly in cheek. “I haven’t found the plans yet for a 747, but as soon as I do, they are in trouble.”

McCormick’s plans for building experimental airplanes powered by Corvair engines is no joke.

Pulled from wrecking yards and scrap heaps, engines from Chevrolet’s once-popular compact car are perfect for experimental aircraft enthusiasts to rebuild and convert into airplane engines, he said.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

Chris Santistevan and John Hams (left to right)

At Arc-Zone.com we get some interesting customers, and Chris Santistevan is no exception. He not only a trapeze artist he is a welder too!

At night he dazzles visitors at the Las Vegas Ultimate Variety Show (see video below).

By day, however, he can be seen fabricating stainless steel above-ground pools for high rise hotels in the city.

Chris called us up looking for a good tungsten grinding solution– Arc-Zone.com offers the industry’s most comprehensive line up of tungsten sharpeners.

He was concerned that his newer employees were wasting a lot of time dressing tungsten on side grinders, and they were getting inconsistent welds.  We got him hooked up with a Sharpie DX-K pro-kit, and he told us a little bit about his work.

Chris fabricates stainless steel custom pool liners as well as  supply pipes, flanges, and tubes.  I didn’t know this, but evidently it’s a requirement that hotels with pools above the twelfth floor have the pool made entirely from TIG welded stainless steel!

Once completed, the pool is then sprayed with gunite to look like  a traditional pool.   As Chris points out, no one ever actually gets to see his work, but it is critical to the safety of the hotel nonetheless!

100 miles.  1 gallon.  Go! That’s the premise behind the upcoming One Gallon Challenge – a contest for alternative fuel vehicles to see who can get to Boston from Greenfield the fastest on one gallon of gas, if at all.

Contestants hope to drive the future into Boston

By Laura A. Bennett, Globe Correspondent

(Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe)

Roo Trimble has been holed up in his backyard shed for months. Hunched amid whirring saws and jagged metal scraps, he has been welding the aluminum skeleton of a small car, smoothing the joints between the latticed pipes, aligning the wheels, and climbing in and out of the metal hull to make sure he can fit snugly – but not too snugly – inside.

Trimble hopes the three-wheeled, almond-shaped contraption will carry him to victory Thursday in a first-time event called the One Gallon Challenge. As part of the second Boston GreenFest, Trimble and six others will attempt to drive their homemade cars from Greenfield to Boston City Hall Plaza, a distance of 100 miles, using just 1 gallon of gasoline.

“These days,’’ Trimble said, wiping his brow with the back of one hand, “we need to think about taking the snail shells off our cars – not dragging our house with us everywhere we go.’’

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

Then maybe you should come and join the Milwaukee Inventors’ and Entrepreneurs’ Forum.  The meetings, founded by Jill Welytok, are a forum in which inventors and entrepreneurs can work hand in hand, providing important feedback for each other, insider advice, and maybe even an investment or two.

Milwaukee forum brings inventors, entrepreneurs together

Tannette Johnson-Elie | Connections
Posted: July 21, 2009

As a patent attorney, Jill Gilbert Welytok frequently encounters people who come up with clever inventions but lack the resources and connections to launch their products.

Photo By: MaryJo Walicki --- Doug Bartelt stands in a heavy-duty lifter mounted in the back of his truck.

“Many people will go through great expense filing a patent for products that they couldn’t sell or make money from,” said Welytok, a managing partner with Absolute Technology Law Group LLC, a 3-year-old Milwaukee company that specializes in patents, trademarks, copyrights, licensing agreements and due diligence. “Sometimes people have a great idea or product, but what matters most is what the market thinks.”

If the market thinks your product stinks, you’re not going to make money from it. But what if you could test your invention on other inventors and entrepreneurs who have successfully developed and marketed products?

Thanks to Welytok, there now is a place where local inventors can come together to network and share ideas: The Downtown Milwaukee Inventors’ and Entrepreneurs’ Forum. The forum meets monthly at the Germania Building, 135 W. Wells St., and draws 60 to 120 people.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

With the down-turning economy,there is no doubt that business can be hard. In this article from The Fabricator magazine, Art Hedrick, longtime consultant to the sheet metal stamping industry discusses three overlooked, self destructive factors that may be negatively affecting your operation.

Survival—Are factors other than the economy dragging down your operation?

By Art Hedrick, Contributing Writer
February 10, 2009

I’m not going to sugar-coat it; our economy stinks. As optimistic as I’d like to think I am, I am also a realist. Maybe it’s because I live in Michigan, the heart of the U.S. automotive industry. Need I say more?

Like many of you, I also have felt the effects of our economy. Financial outlooks are quite bleak for some die shops and stampers. I wish I were writing a “how to” article about deep-drawing techniques, or several ways to reduce pierce punch breakage. Something to help you reduce your stamping and die-building costs would be great. However, with the economy the way it is, I really doubt if some of the tooling tips I can offer, such as changing the clearance for a piercing operation or polishing a radius in a drawing die, will have a dramatic impact on your overall company profit. No doubt every improvement helps, but realistically, these tips probably won’t save your company.

I am not an economist, nor a financial expert, and I certainly don’t want to pretend that I have the magic solution that will solve our financial crisis. However, throughout my career as a consultant, I have made some common observations with respect to die shops and stampers. Sharing this knowledge may help your company to be far more competitive.

CONTINUE READING ONLINE ->

What are you doing to keep your weld shop in business?

A buddy of mine sent me a copy of a letter he has written to President Barak Obama, and with his permission, I’m posting it here. Dan Allford from ArcSpecialties in Houston, TX I first met Dan when he came to San Diego to do a technical presentation at the local AWS section meeting on behalf of Arc-Zone.com. At the time our Sales Manager was Mr. John Dimock, who knew Dan personally and invited him. Dan came in and put on an outstanding presentation about automated welding systems and related equipment. His company builds some highly engineered equipment and since that time he has been gracious with his time, helping several of our customers improve their operations.

When I read Dan’s letter to the President I was impressed that it clearly tells the story of a real person trying to build something of value, and it includes facts — no emotion, no negative attacks — about the shift that has taken place in the American economy, a shift which clearly is not working.

Thanks Dan for taking the time to put your thoughts in writing — I hope you get a response, and more importantly I hope we as a nation can get back to building things of value — preferably out of metal!

You too can let President Obama know your thoughts. The White House website is easy to navigate– and you can use the easy Contact Us email form, or go old skool and write a letter.

President Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

I am writing today to express my belief that the bail out of financial
institutions with tax payer dollars is wrong. Private liability should
not be covered by government debt. I believe failure should be
punished. I encourage you to cease such payments and instead prosecute those in the financial sector and government who have committed fraud and embezzlement.

I have watched with dismay as the US GDP swapped from 25%
manufacturing 11% financial services in 1978 to 21% financial services
and 13% manufacturing in 2008. I believe that industries such as
manufacturing are essential to a healthy economy. What our government is doing is shifting money from industries which CREATE wealth such as manufacturing, mining and agriculture to sectors which simply TRANSFER wealth specifically financial services.

I own a small company which builds robots and other industrial
machinery. I just paid the corporate taxes for my company for this
quarter. An amount many times larger than my salary.
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