Hi Fixalinc!
Yes I did! In fact, that was the first part of the tour, and also the location where they had the welding educator's workshop seminar... This all was located at the Lincoln Electric Automation Division which is basically on the same street as the manufacturing Division only, it's a totally separate facility..
They showed us six different systems which were awesome to see, and some of the configurations were really impressive to say the least! They had this one system where they set up acouple of robots on a line to weld together sprinkler fittings together as well as irrigation assemblies also and I'll tell you what, these puppies were flying around that piping without missing a beat! Really cool stuff but, you got to go there yourself to see it yourself in order to grasp just how far they have come with automation today...
And I know that it's going to be even more important for today's youngster who wants to go head first into the welding field that they need to become more familiar with programming these systems in order to make themselves more valuable in the future of manufacturing which is switching more and more towards automation in order to try to bridge the shortage gap of skilled welders... So it's going to be more and more important to train future students in programming these robots as well as continuously updating them in the latest advances in welding technology in order to compete globally with the rest of the world. That's just the reality of the world today!
Finally, I believe that the future welders are going to be competitive only if they spend more time learning more with respect to welding science, and they're going to be forced to become comfortable with mathematics in order to understand the abstract concepts better with respect to welding physics as well as metallurgy... In other words, if they wish to become the new leaders in the welding field, they must dedicate themselves to spend more time in the classroom on a yearly basis, and I would like to see that the average school year become longer than it already is because, both in Europe as well as in Asian countries, the students spend much more time in school throughout each year than their American counterparts so if we are to remain competitive, we need to teach our students over longer school calenders each year!
I can go on and on but, I'll end up ranting about all sorts of stuff when all you asked me was if I saw any of the robots so, I'll stop here and reiterate with a resounding yes!
Respectfully,
Henry