Welding In Canada Enters the 21st Century

By Cheryl Rego

"Canada is rising well to the challenge of applying new processes and equipment in the welding industry."

Big changes in the past ten years have driven Canada’s welding business into a high tech, competitive and quality conscious industry. While Ontario leads the country in manufacturing innovation, the maritime provinces are making important breakthroughs on marine applications and the western provinces are on top of welding applications for the oil sands industry.

Today, being a welder in Canada is not necessarily the hot, physically challenging work that employed previous generations of welders. Grant Harvey, the General Manager of Hobart Brothers of Canada Ltd., says he’s experienced dramatic changes in the industry during his career.

"I started out as a welder in the Alberta oil and fabrication industry," said Harvey. "When I first started welding, there was much more emphasis on manual processes and Alberta was doing a lot of welding with shielded metal arc welding processes. The level of technology and the use of more productive processes has definitely improved since I started welding 20 years ago."

"For example, today’s welding machines incorporate new technology which not only improves the quality of the weld, but also makes life easier for the welder. Inverter-based power supplies combine portability with ease of use and adaptability. They operate on single- or three- phase power and support MIG, pulsed MIG, stick, TIG, pulsed TIG, flux cored, and air carbon arc. They will work in the rugged environments of industries such as shipbuilding, construction or steel erection."

Welding products now offer much more sophistication. One big change has been the adoption of robotics. Dave Fink is the General Manager of Panasonic Factory Automation Company Canada. He has been in the welding industry for more than 36 years.

"This industry has changed so much since I first got involved. It is totally different," Fink said. "The major changes are with flexible automation. In the past decade or so we have seen a huge trend towards flexible automation. The welding robot has certainly become a major tool in manufacturing."

Fink said the push towards automation comes from the drive for efficiencies at all levels. He noted that the automotive sector in particular has pushed companies to adopt processes that are more time- and cost efficient.

"The North American automobile manufacturers have had a difficult time competing and have seen a lot of their market go offshore," he explained. "The North American ‘big three’ have put a lot of pressure on their suppliers to cut costs and become more price competitive, and that becomes an opportunity for people like ourselves who sell automation. Any time or money we can save is an opportunity. Automotive manufacturers want to make their cars lighter to capitalize on fuel efficiencies. We are seeing more applications for aluminium and thinner steels, higher strength steels but lower weight. This creates opportunities for us to come up with some innovative welding applications and welding equipment."

Panasonic Automation focuses on building arc-welding robots, with two main robot product lines. The robots are inverter-controlled with an artificially intelligent power source integrated in the robot controller. The robots’ smoothing command adjusts the cornering accuracy level. An independent, articulated axis provides a large vertical operation cross-section and an extremely long horizontal reach. The robots have an offset wrist advantage that allows the welding torch to get close to the work and to get the best torch angle.

Fink said that Canada is rising well to these challenges for applying new processes and equipment. "Canada is extremely good at integrating automation systems. We have many good integrators, and are well ahead of the US. For the size of our market, we are extremely good at coming up with automated solutions. We have many automation houses in Canada, particularly in Ontario, and they are truly world class. This has come as a result of our competitive automotive parts industry. We also export to the US and Mexico."

Industry experts agree that Canada is on par with Europe and the US in the development and adoption of new technologies. However, due to differences in regional economies, some provinces are better able to take advantage of new processes than others. "The Ontario market and even Eastern Canada and Quebec have more of a capital focus in the use of automation. Western Canada still has a lot of manual welding going on," said Harvey.

In Alberta, Randy Cottrell of Cottrell Services Incorporated has spent many years working on boilers and the construction of pressure vessels. For his specific needs, he feels robotics is not as useful a tool. "We have people coming out here and saying you can improve your production with these new technologies. They’re using robotics and that is not an acceptable process for pressure vessels," said Cottrell. "Ontario has really made great leaps and bounds with their advancement and process because of the applicability of the technology."

Cottrell said another deterrent to adopting new technologies is the high capital cost required to purchase new equipment that in many instances may only be applicable for one job. "The Japanese showed us some of their technology with narrow gap welding and welding of 8" thick material. We had to question whether we can use that technology, and if we could afford it. We would be really looking at cost prohibitive overhead," he said. "For a lot of this equipment, you need more than one job to pay it off and a lot of these jobs are very narrow in their scope of productivity. One job is often very different from the next."

On the other hand, Doug Golosky of Clearwater Welding in Fort McMurray, Alberta is finding out that properly applied technology is vital to his business. Golosky founded Clearwater Welding in 1984. With over 700 employees in central and western Canada, the company is now one of Canada’s largest welding shops. "I have a working arrangement with the University of Waterloo and they do all my research for us. We’re into robotics and computerized welding systems," Golosky said. "We were one of the first companies in the world that could do a 40-foot length of pipe."

Golosky said that success comes from being open to new technologies, but only choosing those that are profitable. "We’re always looking at what we need to do to be better than the competition, how to stay in the industry and keep going. We need to be on top of what’s happening, be aware. Companies are going to try stuff, and some is going to be successful and some is going to fall by the wayside. We keep plugging along," said Golosky.

Innovative processes can do more than improve efficiencies. Walters Inc., an Ontario welding company, is using new technologies to build structures that were previously unfeasible. Walters Inc. provided the fabrication and engineering of 3400 tons for the Pearson International Airport Terminal Expansion, which included structural steel buttress framing and architecturally exposed wishbones. Wishbones are a complex, oversize 3D plate fabrication connecting arched roof girders to radius buttress framing, all engineered to maintain architectural clearance lines and fabricated to stringent specifications.

The company also received accolades for the Ram’s Horn, a piece of artwork fabricated for the TransCanada PipeLines and located at TransCanada’s head office in Calgary, Alberta. The project was completed over a one-year period. "It was a very complicated structure," said Project Engineer Ed Lacroix, "The plates were bent in several different dimensions and had to be installed over these unique curved tubular members." Lacroix said it was an intense process using advanced computer software to model what the artist wanted.

Walters Inc. maintains their success lies in being innovative and thinking "outside the box" by approaching every project objectively. The company has a progressive engineering facility to service connection design, design-build, detailing, and construction engineering requirements. Integrated engineering and detailing software solutions are applied to the full range of complex steel structures, plate work and miscellaneous steel that they fabricate and install. "The first thing is our detailing software," said Lacroix, "The old days of drawing on the board are long gone. We are using advanced three-dimensional modelling software, which gives us a true representation of the actual structure. It is very helpful in terms of identifying interferences and clashes. We build the model using the software. Everything is integrated - computerized detailing drilling lines, plate processors, everything is linked. We just download all the information. It is all computerized, very limited in human error."

One of Walters’ current projects includes the expansion for the Ontario College of Art and Design. "It is a very challenging project because of limited space on the site. We are fortunate that we are also erecting the structure. It works well for the client because we are knowledgeable on the fabrication and construction end so we can marry the two areas together and provide a good final structure to the client," Lacroix said.

The welding industry in Canada certainly seems poised for growth, but there is general agreement that there is room for more change. "We need to develop the industry in Canada," said Fink. "We need more publicity. Canada’s ability as far as putting automation systems together needs to be publicized better in Canada and internationally. It is an area where we can compete well."

At the same time, Fink predicted that welding in Canada would grow at all levels. "We’re going to see a lot of growth in our industry at both ends, at the end with robotics and at the low end where more and more individuals buy a welder to use at home, or people open a one-person shop, creating innovative products that can then be sold," he said.