Let's hope that their welding is better than their spelling! Unless they're going to introduce some cookery, too. Braising, indeed!

John

Yeah! I too spotted the cookery in between welding! Don't burn it!!

I did a local welding course many years ago and cannot now remember how much it cost but darned sure it was a 3 figure sum. Reckon that one could be very, very good value for money.

It's to do with jobs. Employers want different skills. A quick check locally shows 28 vacancies:

• 2 degree level engineers
• 3 CNC
• 1 CAD
• 1 Computer
• 1 Network
• 1 Components Assembly (This is the only technical job that's not paying above average wage and doesn't require qualifications.)

The other 18 vacancies are for drivers, painters, bakers, handymen etc. No call for welders at the moment which is a bit unusual.

In this area there are no jobs for manual machinists, so why expect local colleges to run courses? Conversely, 8 of the engineering jobs listed require significant computer skills, which the college does support.

When I did metalwork at school, the local rag was full of opportunities for machinists. Pretty much all long gone. Instead my local machine shop advertises having about 30 CNC machines, plus one manual lathe and milling machine, I guess the latter two are for quick jobs too simple to justify CNC.

It's sad but there isn't much call for manual machining skills. Jobs do exist, but in much smaller numbers than before, and training tends to be done by specialist colleges or employers.

Local colleges have shifted emphasis. Mine offers full-blown courses in Mechanical Engineering, but at my age I don't fancy: 'The course studies the use of new technology in engineering but also relies heavily on the academic study of maths, science and materials engineering.' It doesn't offer hands-on metalwork, or access to manual machine which is what I want. I'm self-taught, and thank god for forum friends!

Dave

When you get there, remind them that joining metals is BRAZING, and BRAIZING is what you do to beef.

Cheers, Tim

Edited By Tim Stevens on 23/10/2022 17:05:16

There are courses available via Llandrillo college. Looks like they’re delivered in Llangefni though.

**LINK**

(No idea of costs)

Michael – if you want welding courses in Flintshire then Deeside College do quite a number and at various levels.

Keith

I think these days if you shop around, you can get an adequate quality inverter type welder for a reasonable price, which will offer broadly comparable performance to running the kinds of machines most colleges have for their main welding workshop.

(I happen to have been to the workshops at Vision Center / West Notts College, and they run pretty nice Parweld inverter mig and tig units, and whilst good units they're not *that* different from much cheaper copies available via the net.)

​

Thing is if you have the space, and/or know you'd use it frequently you can get really good second-hand industrial welders on the cheap because the market is less active than for small units which will run on a 13A plug.

For example, there's a LAR500 Mig/ARC power supply with Separate Feeder and overhead support arm going for £300 on ebay at the moment, and it is a very tempting offer, but it doesn't have some of the sheet-metal welding features of my current welder, so would end up wanting to keep both.

That said, my MIG unit is an old-school ESAB Smashweld 180 (wonderful name, and good description of how previous owners treated it) which will (mostly) run on a 13A plug (it's better off on a 32A plug if you want to use the full 180A) and cost £90 "spares or repairs" with just the contact tip and nozzle missing off the torch (which is a nice Binzel MB).