Welding Teacher

[jpaulk1]

I am a welding teacher for Alief ISD in Houston Texas. My campus is the Alief Center for Advanced Careers. We are a welding program fo 9-12 grade students and we concentrate our program on industry standard welding certifications. We have a Lincoln 4400 plasma table that we use to raise money for our program and help local community non-profit organizations. This is my 8th year of teaching after retiring from the oil and gas industry. Before that I was a 9 year veteran of the US Navy working as an aviation welder at various bases in the intermediate maintenance departments. I love passing on my knowledge to the younger generation, their success is my success.

[plasmanewbie]

Welcome jpaulk1. Glad to see people still excited about teaching trades to the younger generation. This is a great place to be, lots of tips and tricks can be learned everyday from others here.

[jpaulk1]

Thanks for welcoming me to the community.

[SegoMan DeSigns]

Welcome to the plasma jungle, nice to see someone with real life experience teaching the next generation..

[jpaulk1]

Thanks, we definitely need more teachers from the industry. The skilled craftsmen classes are coming back to the schools form a storage in the industry. I’m trying to send them out with the basic knowledge to at least land a helper’s position or spur their interest in going to a trade school after high school. Having good luck so far.

[adbuch]

Welcome to the forum jpaulk1! Thank you for your service. There are several other members here using the Lincoln/Torchmate tables, and the TM Cad is apparently a very powerful program for creating/editing drawing files. You have years of great hands-on experience to share and hopefully many of your students are paying attention and will benefit greatly from your teaching. What sorts of projects are your students making? Perhaps share a few photos of some of their work.

David

[jpaulk1]

We have a community market at our campus two times a year and we make metal signs of various type, mostly holiday themes. We currently in gaged with a community garden in the area to make garden signs, but are waiting on this group to give us their ideas on what they want. All of our proceeds go to our class fund to further our program.

[acourtjester]

Welcome aboard. lots of neat projects posted here for your class to use. Great to see a School Board with a view as to what's important for its students.

[SegoMan DeSigns]

Hey Teach,

Be sure to tell the students to save their files as DXF's for future use, the TM's format only works on the TM..

[TJS]

Welcome. Does Texas require you to have a teaching certificate. Not a welding teaching certificate but one for general teaching. I am looking into this in my area as many schools do not even have a metal shop class anymore. I did take a tour in our middle school, and they have a metal shop class that looks idle.I think our local high school has idle shops as well. Most likey because of the liabilty factor. I would love to get into this. What textbooks are you using. Thanks for joining and welcome.
T.J.

[Joe Jones]

Doing metal projects is nice, but place an emphasis on the software. Make sure the kids know WHY a certain G-Code sends the carriage left or right, or increases or decreases the cut speed, etc. The knowledge of the software is what they can take to a job interview, and not the cool weather vane they made in high school metal shop.

I have, use and love the DesignEdge software, and the PlasmaCam tables are good, but quirky. It is a good system, however knowledge of DesignEdge and running a PlasmaCam table does not generally translate into a cnc operator's job, because of the proprietary nature of the software.

Joe

[tinspark]

We have a community market at our campus two times a year and we make metal signs of various type, mostly holiday themes. We currently in gaged with a community garden in the area to make garden signs, but are waiting on this group to give us their ideas on what they want. All of our proceeds go to our class fund to further our program.

Welcome JPaulk1,
It doesn't look like you are a contributing member yet. If not it may be well worth it for you to become one. $20 per year
There are literally thousands of free files here that the kids can use, modify and tweak to make some really cool stuff. Once you become a contributing member you will have access to all of these (practically free) resources. But be prepared for a few late nights sorting through them all!!!
Then downloading and cataloguing them all so that they are not a jumbled mess will be your next challenge!!

welcome aboard.
Also, send some of your good ones (students) over to your local sheet Metal workers Apprenticeship training facility in your area.
And have them talk to the "apprenticeship coordinator".
we are always willing to train up some good young people.
I teach an advanced welding class for our apprentices one night a week and as yourself, love to pass on a few nuggets as I am able to based on their desire to learn.
Most of our apprentices end up pulling between 5-7 weld certs (structural as well as light gauge for industrial work (AwsD9.1 and AWS D1.1) or whatever is need as jobs become available for the contractors. Also, before they turn out to Journeyman after a 5 year apprenticeship..
Earn while U learn is the motto, and no college loans to pay back!! Plus make up to $100k per year or more, based on your position. Not a bad gig!!

[adbuch]

Doug - I agree! My feeling is that the $20/year is a real deal considering all the resources this forum provides. I also like your thoughts on the teaching/training of the up and coming generation.

Back in the day when I attended junior high (grades 7 and 8) we had wood shop, g-shop, drafting, but no welding or machine shop. But then when I got to high school I took machine shop, welding, wood working, sheet metal, drafting, electrical, and auto shop. These were all individual classes with individual teachers. I really don't remember anybody getting hurt or injured in any of my classes. Even when I got to college I took drafting and machine shop as part of the Mechanical Engineering curriculum.

But these days (fast forward 55 years or so) most of the same high schools in my area have done away with these "technical" classes. Perhaps it is a liability issue, or perhaps there just weren't enough students interested in these sorts of skills anymore. My feeling is that the computer games and internet have had a lot to do with the lack of interest.

David