Just got back from vacation/training&testing.
Here are a few of the many test welds. Welded Niobium, Titanium, Zirconium, and niobium/titanium alloys. All bend tested. Tried to get some fancy colours on them to see if slightly oxidized coupons will bend, and they do.
.187" fillet welds on Ti



.250" Zr702 zirconium



.187" groove on Ti



.125" groove on Ti alloy



.125" grooves on various Ti and Niobium alloys




It was amazing. got to see the whole process, right from the various ores from Khazikstan, Sierra Leone,etc. See teh melting and pouring, and crucibles,etc. The 18,000+lb ingots of zirconium worth a cool mill'.
The term expert has never had such a meaning when you take the training and theory from the guys who create, design, and make the metals. Too bad I couldn't see the R & D area for NASA and the airforce...oh well.

 

that's awesome sound like you really enjoy what you do

 

wow, how cool is your job!

 

Sweet, who do you work for?

 

All the car work I do is for my own little company, but the day job is an instructor at Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.(SAIT Polytechnic) I teach an apprenticeship program for welding.
I also help Applied Reasearch on many projects consulting on welding/material applications, and actually doing some of the welding. Most of what they do is Canadian athlete performance and development of training. They also delve deeply into future power solutions, and prototyping.
I love this job more than I thought possible.

 

my brother is a millwright for suncor up in ft.mcmur, but lives in leduc. it is just stupid the money he makes. sounds like all the good jobs are out there!

 

Very cool job. I may see you out there in September for the World Skills competition. I'm the Canadian representative for Automotive Service.

 

That is some nice welding there 9bells!!! I went to SAIT for electronics engineering tech!

 

Nice. Thanks.
As to the skills, I hope to see alot of future tradespeople. It is going to be huge. We are quite involved as you might imagine.

 

Looks like fun. Enjoying what you do is priceless. How do the different materials flow (weld puddle travel)? I don't know much about titanium but that it is $$. Are any of these exotic materials beneficial in fabricating high performance auto parts?

 

Some of them...titanium and magnesium for instance. A lot of the exotic metals are designed more for very high corrosion resistance and don't really have much application on a car.