Welding Workshop Research Articles

Advanced product design principles applied for developing a reconfigurable multi-station welding workbench

The research results presented in the paper are part of a larger approach concerning the improvement of product design process sustainability by enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of Product Design activities. As case study, an applied educational project is exemplified as result sample, particularly referring to applying such advanced design principles in developing a reconfigurable multi-station welding workbench, intended to solve the problem of the lack of space which usually most of the welding workshops have to confront with.

Factor Analysis of Lightweight Material Welding Workshop Intelligentization

Factor Analysis of Lightweight Material Welding Workshop Intelligentization

A Learning Evaluation for an Immersive Virtual Laboratory for Technical Training applied into a Welding Workshop

This study aims to explore the results of welding virtual training performance, designed using a learning model based on cognitive and usability techniques, applying an immersive concept focused on person attention. Moreover, it also intended to demonstrate that exits a moderating effect of performance improvement when the user experience is taken as a feed-back for the student. The results can provide important information to increase the operator performance during the training of welding complex machines to reduce accidents and waste of test material.

Lung-deposited surface area concentration measurements in selected occupational and non-occupational environments

Previous experimental and epidemiologic studies suggested that exposure to ultrafine particles (UFP) may result in adverse health effects. Metrics such as the number-concentration and especially the surface-area or lung-deposited surface area (LDSA) appear to be appropriate metrics of dose for predicting pulmonary inflammation of insoluble and poorly soluble ultrafine particles. Currently not much data including LDSA concentrations is available. The aim of this study was therefore to measure LDSA concentrations in a variety of occupational and non-occupational environments as well as in chamber tests. To this end, novel handheld online-monitors were deployed and evaluated for their suitability to be used in a variety of micro-environments and under different conditions. Chamber emissions tests included incense and candle burning, 3D printing and cigarette/e-cigarette smoking. The LDSA concentration was measured in occupational environments such as a canteen kitchen, a welding workshop and in a car. Measurements were also conducted in a private house with a wood-burning stove and with ongoing parallel cooking activities. Depending on the type of micro-environment, the ongoing activities or the material investigated in the chamber-tests, large differences were observed in terms of measured LDSA concentrations, some exceeding up to 1000 times that of the baseline concentration detected before activities initiated. In some of the investigated environments LDSA concentrations were measured for the first time. The data might therefore serve as reference for future studies. The handheld instrument used to measure this data worked well both for stationary measurements as well as for personal monitoring and proved to be an alternative to bulkier benchtop instruments.

A study of natural radioactivity in the welding workshops waste

A study of natural radioactivity in the welding workshops waste

The Analysis of the Relationship Among the Different Factors Influencing Welding Production by the Gephi Software

Welding manufacturing is a commonly used process in a variety of industries and countries. Nowadays, in industrially advanced countries, like the US and European countries, increasing the robotic and mechanized level of the welding production line and decreasing human labor is the trend in order to lower production costs. In the newly industrialized countries, manual welding is still widely employed. The increasing quality requirements and costs call for less repair work and manufacturing waste from manual welding workshops and factories in the future. To understanding how different human, social, and performance factors during manual welding production influence the welding quality and cost is especially significant to the companies in the newly industrialized countries. The Gephi software provides a possible visualization environment to observe the relationships among the different factors in welding manufacturing processes. By using the information by interviews, field visits, and discussions in the case companies, the Gephi software can reveal the relationships among the factors. The aim of this study is to find the direct visual image of the relationships among the different factors and five welding works. The result provides the foundation for future detailed analyses and it contributes to improve the working environment and management strategy in welding industries.

Tata Nano: A Case in External Communication

An Indigenous endeavor of a business tycoon shielded with a marvelous ethical cause resulted in a revolution in the automobile industry. This dream project situated in Sanand on a 450 hectare complex comprised of five sections like Press shop, Weld shop etc. State of the art automation was employed. The dream project came true but got distorted under an uncanny catastrophe. It was finally the serenity of the brand and its external communication strategies that withstood the odds to some extent yet in a volatile market and fluctuating buyer's penchants the strategy to survival is correct positioning. Tata Nano is an instance of positioning and repositioning where both tactics were futile. In the present case the author proceeds through a thorough analysis of external communication and positioning strategies of the ‘People's Car’ and impact on customer psychology

Analysis of Chinese Welding Industries Today and in the Future (Focus on Cost, Productivity, and Quality)

This paper make a detailed survey and research about the real situation about Chinese welding industry, and the future cooperation suggestion between Finland and China in this area. This topic was approached by searching for the latest and most accurate information through interviews, site visits, websites, books and promotional materials. The site visits are the most important. The destination cities in China cover a large range from northern to the southwestern areas in China. More than 15 professional welding factories or factories which have a welding workshop were visited, and based on discussions and an investigation in those factories; detailed and reliable data was collected. By using and analyzing that information, a general profile of modern Chinese welding factories was generated.

Welding Waste In Vocational College: Should It Be Properly Managed?

This article outlines the study findings on solid waste composition and generation rates in six vocational college welding workshops in Malaysia. Our data indicated that vocational college welding waste was composed of scrap metal, metal dust, welding electrodes, and grinding disks which constituted 92.89, 3.64, 3.07 and 0.4 percent of the total welding waste, respectively. The total welding waste generation rates were varied from 59.57 to 117.63 kgw-1 across the study workshops with the average of 83.42 kgw-1. Per capita generation rates were varied from 0.60 to 1.90 kgw-1st-1 with the average of 1.23 kgw-1st-1. These data illustrate the potential environmental impact of welding waste due to its amount and hazardous nature of the constituents as some components were known to contain various metal oxides. These data are important in determining the dimensions of solid waste management in vocational educational institutions.

PCBs Contaminantion of Transformer Oil and its Occupational Health and Safety Status in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

Electrification in Kathmandu valley had started in 1911 and the use of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) probably started since 1940s (Devkota, 2005). This research work was undertaken to find out the degree and extent of PCBs contamination in transformer oil and to explore its impacts on occupational health and safety issues of the workers and on the environment. The research was focused on Distributions Centers of the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) in the Kathmandu valley, NEA Lainchaur workshop and welding workshops of the Kathmandu valley. The samples of transformer oil were collected, safely stored and analyzed using L2000DX Chloride Analyzer, PCBs contamination at >50 ppm level was found in 184 distribution transformers with total volume of PCBs contaminated transformer oil to be 67566.3 Kg. The knowledge on impacts of PCBs contaminated transformer oil on human health and environment was better among NEA employees than among employees of welding workshops, though not satisfactory. Due to very low awareness, the workers come in contact with the transformer oil regularly and many health impacts such as eye problems, skin related complication, weakness and respiratory problems might be due to this exposure; however, exact impacts could not be verified scientifically.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ije.v3i4.11727 International Journal of EnvironmentVolume-3, Issue-4, Sep-Nov 2014Page : 12-23

Research and Design on Integrating RFID System in Automotive Manufacture Based on Web Service

In order to remedy the deficiency of application of bar code that needs artificial intervention in automotive manufacture, we propose a solution to integrate Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system in the original enterprise information system based on Web service. Distributed real-time data of welding, lacquer covering and assembly workshops in the automotive manufacture are collected, that are used in the enterprise information system to provide more productions information for management. Firstly, the architecture of integrating the RFID system and the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) in automotive manufacture is given, that is focused on the RFID system network, the Middleware and the Application Gateway. Finally, web service implementation is designed to integrate RFID system in enterprise information system.

Welding Fume Exposure among Welders in Small Size Welding Workshops in Malaysia

Welding fumes has both acute and long term chronic hazards. Small size welding workshops often have the drawback in health and safety consciousness. This study is conducted to investigate the personal welding fumes exposure among welders in small size welding workshop. Two workshops were selected to represent a very small welding workshop (2 workers) and a medium workshop (8 workers). The main activities in these workshops were metal inert gas welding (MIG) process onto mild steel material. Welding fumes was sampled for 8 hours and analyze by the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The results of the study showed that only iron element existed notably in time weighted average (TWA) 8 hours calculation for both workshops. However, welding fumes exposure for both workshops were well below the permissible exposure limit (PEL) as stated in the Use and Standards of Exposure of Chemical Hazardous to Health regulation (USECHH) 2000 under the Malaysian Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994.

Notice on a methodology for characterizing emissions of ultrafine particles/nanoparticles in microenvironments

Notice on a methodology for characterizing emissions of ultrafine particles/nanoparticles in microenvironments João Fernando Pereira Gomes,1,2 Paula Cristina Silva Albuquerque,3 Helder Manuel Dias Salvação Esteves,4 Patrícia Almeida Carvalho5 1Chemical Engineering Department, ISEL, Lisbon Polytechnic, R. Conselheiro Emidio Navarro, Lisbon; 2IBB – Institute of Biotechnoloy and Bioengineering, IST, Technical University of Lisbon, Lisbon; 3ESTESL – School of Health Tecnologies, Lisbon Polytechnic, Lisbon; 4Bioengineering Department, IST, Technical University of Lisbon, Lisbon; 5InAir, Lda., Moita, Portugal Abstract: Bearing in mind the potential adverse health effects of ultrafine particles, it is of paramount importance to perform effective monitoring of nanosized particles in several microenvironments, which may include ambient air, indoor air, and also occupational environments. In fact, effective and accurate monitoring is the first step to obtaining a set of data that could be used further on to perform subsequent evaluations such as risk assessment and epidemiologic studies, thus proposing good working practices such as containment measures in order to reduce occupational exposure. This paper presents a useful methodology for monitoring ultrafine particles/nanoparticles in several microenvironments, using online analyzers and also sampling systems that allow further characterization on collected nanoparticles. This methodology was validated in three case studies presented in the paper, which assess monitoring of nanosized particles in the outdoor atmosphere, during cooking operations, and in a welding workshop. Keywords: ultrafine particles, exposure assessment, monitoring methodology

Layout Optimization for Welding Workshop of Vehicle Door Based on SLP

Due to introduction of new vehicle models, an automobile manufacturing enterprise usually needs to make corresponding adjustments of the facility layout of the door welding workshop. On the basis of analyzing the production process and logistics characteristics of the welding line, the facility layout of the workshop is improved and the production logistics cost is reduced by using the SLP (Systematic Layout Planning) and internal logistics analysis method. Finally, a real production example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Exposure to respirable dust and manganese and prevalence of airways symptoms, among Swedish mild steel welders in the manufacturing industry

Welding fume consists of metal fumes, e.g., manganese (Mn) and gases, e.g., ozone. Particles in the respirable dust (RD) size range dominate. Exposure to welding fume could cause short- and long-term respiratory effects. The prevalence of work-related symptoms among mild steel welders was studied, and the occupational exposure to welding fumes was quantified by repeated measurements of RD, respirable Mn, and ozone. Also the variance components were studied. A questionnaire concerning airway symptoms and occupational history was answered by 79% of a cohort of 484 welders. A group of welders (N = 108) were selected and surveyed by personal exposure measurements of RD and ozone three times during 1 year. The welders had a high frequency of work-related symptoms, e.g., stuffy nose (33%), ocular symptoms (28%), and dry cough (24%). The geometric mean exposure to RD and respirable Mn was 1.3 mg/m(3) (min-max 0.1-38.3 mg/m(3)) and 0.08 mg/m(3) (min-max <0.01-2.13 mg/m(3)), respectively. More than 50% of the Mn concentrations exceeded the Swedish occupational exposure limit (OEL). Mainly, low concentrations of ozone were measured, but 2% of the samples exceeded the OEL. Of the total variance for RD, 30 and 33% can be attributed to within-worker variability and between-company variability, respectively. Welders had a high prevalence of work-related symptom from the airways and eyes. The welders' exposure to Mn was unacceptably high. To reduce the exposure further, control measures in the welding workshops are needed. Correct use of general mechanical ventilation and local exhaust ventilation can, for example, efficiently reduce the exposure.

Study on the Characteristics of Harmful Gas Distribution of Welding Semi-Closed Environment

In order to reveal the harmful gas distribution characteristics of welding semi-closed field, this paper established a welding workshop model. Under conditions of natural and mixed convection, the flow state of CO generated in the welding process within the workshop was simulated based on the zero-equation turbulence model. The distribution of CO was analyzed under the conditions of different exhaust rate and different number of working welder. Studies have shown that higher concentration CO appears in the region of 0.6m to 1.5m from the ground; it is necessary to adjust the number of air vents when the number of welder is changing. In addition, the asymmetric structure of workshop also affects the distribution of CO. The simulation results not only can evaluate the pros and cons of the workshop structure and ventilation system, but also provide a theoretical basis for hazardous gas detection and alarm strategy for the further purposes.

Evaluation of the Indoor Environmental Quality in Training Workshops

This study is to evaluate the Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) of vocational training workshops, particularly welding, fabrication, foundry and machine shops. The study was conducted in 28 workshops at Institute Kemahiran Mara (IKM) Kuala Lumpur, Lumut Perak and Tan Sri Yahya Ahmed (TSYA) Pekan Pahang. The measurements collected include temperature, relative humidity, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, dust, air velocity, sound pressure and lighting level. Results showed the temperatures measured were between 30.3°C and 31°C. The relative humidity for 24 workshops was between 63.7% and 64.3%, while the carbon dioxide levels of two workshops were 538.45 ppm and 601.0 ppm. 26 workshops had air velocities below 0.25 m/s—the recommended level of the World Health Organization (WHO). Finally, the lighting levels of twelve workshops were below 160 Lux—the Australian Standard (AS) recommended level. From this study, it was concluded that the IEQ in IKM Vocational training workshops is unhealthy and comfortable for occupancy.

Exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) among welders in Sri Lanka

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are a group of persistent organic pollutants with the ability to cause adverse impacts on human health and the environment. This study describes the indiscriminate use of PCB-contaminated transformer oil as a coolant in informal welding shops in Kalutara, Sri Lanka. Sixty-three welders, one each from a convenience sample of 63 welding workshops participated in the study. We administered a questionnaire and observed work practices. Sixty-two (98%) workplaces used transformer oil as the coolant in the welding equipment, 60 (95%) claiming that it was the only one available. Sixty-two (98%) did not use any protective measures when refilling coolant oil, while none of them safely disposed of the empty coolant oil containers. Only four (6%) were aware of the possible health effects of PCB-contaminated coolant oil. Health and safety measures in the work places studied were very poor. Coolant oil samples from a sub-sample of 30 welding workshops were tested for PCBs; 19 (63%) were positive. PCB-contaminated coolant oil is widely used by the welders in Kalutara without adequate precautions or safety measures.

Analysis of metallurgical and mechanical properties of laser welded super austenitic stainless steel

PurposeLaser welding under high power, high degree of automation and high production rate is extremely advantageous in automotive application. Super austenitic stainless steel is the preferable material for high corrosion resistance requirements. These steels are relatively cheaper than austenitic stainless steel and it is expensive than nickel base super alloys for such applications. The main purpose of this paper is to present the investigations of the microstructure and mechanical properties of super austenitic stainless steel butt joints made by 3.5 kW cooled slab CO2 laser welding using different shielding gases such as argon, nitrogen and helium.Design/methodology/approachThe tensile and impact tests were performed and the fractured surfaces were analyzed by scanning electron microscope. The hardness across the joint zone was measured. The X‐ray diffraction technique was used to analyze the phase composition. The microstructure of the laser welds were analyzed through optical microscopy.FindingsThe tensile sample fractures indicate that the specimen fails in a ductile manner under the action of tensile loading. The impact fracture surfaces of the different shielding gas laser welded joints show mixed mode fractures, that is, ductile and cleavage fractures. The hardness values of the Helium shielded laser joints in the weld metal regions are much higher than the others.Research limitations/implicationsThere is no limitation, except for the availability of the high beam power laser welding machine.Practical implicationsThe only practical implication is the laser welding shop hazard during the experiment.Social implicationsSocial implication is limited. The only hazard during the laser welding is that it may affect human body tissues.Originality/valueThe research work described in the paper is original.

Safety Discussion and Precaution Measures about Laser Beam Welding of Pyrotechnic Actuator

Abstract Structure of pyrotechnic actuator used in AP1000 nuclear power plant squib valve was introduced, and laser beam welding danger of pyrotechnic actuator was analyzed. Sulfur-Free Black Powder charged in pyrotechnic actuator was test by Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) method, and temperature at charging position of pyrotechnic actuator was measured during laser beam welding process, results of test and measure show that temperature at charging position is less than autoignition point of powder. To prevent accidents caused by spark splash, laser beam welding workshop was rebuilt, welding fixtures were designed, and safety precaution measures were added in welding technics, these measures can improve safety of laser beam welding process effectively.