You’re never too young to start welding. Kids, it turns out, are pretty good at it.
Stick a welding rod in their hands, put a piece of work in front of them, give them some basic instruction and you’ve got yourself an enthusiastic welder. They’re turning puddles of molten metal into smooth, consistent, and strong welds in no time.
But don’t be alarmed about hot sparks, blindingly bright light or large amounts of electricity. Other than in a Matrix-esque way, you could say it’s not even real — because It’s all done in the safety of virtual reality.
That’s become part of the business model for Lincoln Electric — use VR to teach kids to weld early, and they’ll learn a valuable skill that’s in demand, and often just handy to know. Product manager Denise Sirochman spends a good deal of her time trying to get kids to weld.
In addition to being one of the largest welding companies in the world, Lincoln is also a champion of its industry and of manufacturing in general. Part of its mission is to promote welding and other skilled trades so that it and, more importantly, its customers have a future workforce.
In short, when things are made, built and repaired in the U.S., Lincoln sells welders.
The company decided pre-COVID it should embrace younger students, Sirochman said. But those eager young minds in middle and elementary schools weren’t going to be as easy to reach as high school students or beyond.
“Most of those schools don’t have a welding school wrapped around them. We thought ‘What could we bring to the classroom that would introduce welding to folks that don’t know anything about it?’” she said.
Lincoln’s not new to VR welding. But its past training offerings resembled the real process of welding. Sirochman needed something smaller, cheaper, and easier to use.
The company worked with Roundtable Learning, a Chagrin Falls company that specializes in learning applications for virtual and augmented reality in classrooms and other training environments.
“We wanted something that was a more slimmed down version of what we already had … our current product is a larger machine that’s more technical in nature and is priced so that one machine would be in a classroom,” Sirochman said.
Fortunately, technology has evolved to match the challenge well, said Sirochman and her collaborators.
“We came to the all-in-one headset,” she said. “The software, the WiFi, everything is in the headset. It’s all in one and you don’t need anything else for it to function. You can have augmented reality, you can have virtual reality, different types of technology can be put into it.”
This reporter gave what’s been dubbed the Voyage Arc Virtual Reality Welding Headset a test run at Lincoln’s big Technology and Training Center on St. Clair Ave. It’s a bit more than a headset, though, as there are two hand controls that become welding tools once things get going.
Roundtable vice president of XR design and development Scott Stachiw said he and his team worked especially hard to make those hand controllers realistic.
“The biggest challenge was the weight and feel of a controller vs. a real welding torch,” Stachiw said.
Does it work? Let’s put it this way: if welding is fairly difficult and requires a fair bit of skill and practice before someone can do it well, then this thing is probably spot on. But it was sort of fun and definitely addictive because you can see as you’re using the program that doing a good job — even in VR — is possible.
But the system does more than just show a pretty or an ugly weld when the user is done. Each session is scored on speed, the consistency of the angle at which the rod was held, and the distance – all of the things that make a good weld – and it generates a number score.
Kids being kids, it didn’t take students more than a hot second to figure out that this meant they could have welding competitions, though Sirochman says that’s not really the point.
They aren’t cheap, though, at $2,900 each on Lincoln’s website. But Lincoln works with schools, especially those that tend to buy bigger numbers, like 10 or 20 sets instead of a single one.
So far, the system’s only been rolled out to a handful of schools in Cuyahoga and Lake counties, mostly in field trials while Lincoln and Roundtable continue to make tweaks. But the results have been good and are getting better, Sirochman said.
It’s not easy to convince schools to spend on new things today, but, more importantly, the budgeting cycles for schools is very slow.
Lincoln was targeting a rollout to 24 schools this year after launching the product last summer, she said, and is on track to hit that mark.
But, while Lincoln and Roundtable hope to make money on the product via its overall sales, Voyage Arc also has a dual mission, Sirochman said, referring to the potential appeal to entice kids to a future in welding.
There’s more work to be done, too.
Stachiw said he’s already working with Lincoln on the next versions of the system.
“The priority is going to be stick and maybe aluminum (welding), but oxygen torch cutting will be important in the next iteration,” he predicts.
Quelle:
Foto: Contributed photo
Students in Cuyahoga County test out Lincoln Electric’s new Voyage Arc virtual welding headset.
https://www.crainscleveland.com/manufacturing/lincoln-electric-uses-vr-welding-train-future-welders
