Hello folks, I have already posted mention of a few items that have changed at our school. Here's a bit more to go with the other items. Our shop essentially is made up of 24 arc welding booths in the main portion of it (8 of these booths were multi-process capable and could support SMAW, lift-arc tig, and wire), nothing overly roomy understand. In addition to that area we have 8 other booths that have been outfitted with GTAW and wire machines, 5 wire, 3 GTAW. Besides those areas, we have 3 more GTAW booths located sporadically around the shop and another 6 or so machines that could be used for SMAW, GTAW, or wire processes to varying degrees in a portable fashion or in conjunction with an existing booth by rolling them up to it and plugging in. We have 3 Lincoln LN-25 suitcase feeders that could be plugged in to various machines and powered with either CC or CV depending upon how we planned to use them.
Well about 6 to 7 months ago we began to look to do a make-over of our capabilities, We had wanted to address the growing need to provide more wire capabilities, standard and advanced, along with better multi-process offerings. We removed 2 Miller Mark VIII's, an "ancient" Lincoln DC 600, and a couple of Miller CP302's. In their place and in addition to them we purchased and have installed: 3 XMT 450's, 5 Miller XMT 350 CC/CV's, 8 Miller XMT 350MPa's w/S-74MPa Plus feeders, 2 Miller 350 Dynasty's, 2 Thermal Arc Powermaster 320 SP's, and a Miller 12VS suitcase feeder. Along with bringing these machines on-line we were able to manifold in shielding gases to the 24 booths originally titled as stick booths and now we have the ability to run wire, stick, and lift-arc tig in any of those booths, we also have advanced wire capabilities in 8 of those booths due to the installation of the XMT 350 MPa's. Manifolded gases include: 75/25 Ar-CO2, and straight Argon. If needed/necessary we have the ability to roll-up bottles of other shielding gases and "plug" them in to provide for better spray transfer capability or allow for other varieties of wire/gas combinations. With our "new" selection of machine combinations we can "theoretically" operate: 12 AC/DC GTAW systems, 37 GTAW lift-arc systems, 41 wire systems, or 46 stick systems. We are very excited about the recent changes that we have been able to implement and we're just about to the point where all of the machines are fully operational. I have included a number of pictures here, some illustrate "old stuff" and others show the "new". Best regards everyone, Allan
EDIT: I have not added photos of some of the other machines yet(don't have any) and you'll notice the racks that our XMT's are set-up in. Local shops donated the metal and paint jobs, we provided the "engineering, fit-up, and welding of them. In addition to the machines that are in racks, a number of carts were built to provide mobility to the other machines and additional ones were built to provide static locations.
