<story><title>Welding and the automation frontier</title><url>https://www.construction-physics.com/p/welding-and-the-automation-frontier</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xyzzy123</author><text>I think the article misses the mark by not highlighting the huge difference between say, construction &amp;#x2F; site welding and manufacturing welding. It&amp;#x27;s sort of a &amp;quot;category error&amp;quot; to lump all jobs together where you happen use a welder.&lt;p&gt;A lot of manufacuring welding was already low paid and boring, you sit there with your mig gun and make the same welds over and over. Often the hiring pool is &amp;quot;unskilled&amp;quot; labour (i.e, you take people who didn&amp;#x27;t have the job title &amp;quot;welder&amp;quot;) and  they train you to operate this one station. These jobs are robot fodder and honestly that&amp;#x27;s probably a good thing.&lt;p&gt;Site or construction welding requires a lot more adaptability, e.g. ability to read plans, resolve issues when the plans are wrong, handle different materials, do layout, alignment, jigs etc and provides an endless stream of &amp;quot;one off&amp;quot; work.&lt;p&gt;(Of course there are a lot more niches than these two!).&lt;p&gt;These are barely the same market so you&amp;#x27;ll be confused by the numbers if you consider everyone to be in the &amp;quot;welder&amp;quot; labour pool.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>digdugdirk</author><text>All good points, but I do want to add context for users of this site who don&amp;#x27;t have any experience with manufacturing or physical trades - the commentary above about manufacturing welding should not be interpreted as welding being a low skill activity.&lt;p&gt;The same distinction between &amp;quot;manufacturing&amp;quot; welding and &amp;quot;construction&amp;quot; welding should probably just be applied within all types of welding in general. It&amp;#x27;s all about the application. Welding just sticks two pieces of metal together, so to use glue as an analogy - it can be used to stick macaroni to paper for a primary school activity, or used during surgery to save someone&amp;#x27;s life. Same action, two wildly different skill levels required for a successful result.&lt;p&gt;Having spent some time with prototyping shops and custom product manufacturing houses - those welders are insanely talented. There is an wild amount of knowledge required (metallurgy, chemistry, physics, electronics) to be used in practice, and the physical demands (fine motor control, holding pieces or your body under complete control at various angles&amp;#x2F;positions) should not be underestimated. Couple that with the understanding of the product being produced and how their actions can improve the end design, and you&amp;#x27;re left with what I tend to see as the closest thing to a wizard as we have in the modern era.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s like the old saying goes - &amp;quot;Give a man a hammer and everything starts to look like a nail. Give a man a welder and everything starts looking like whatever the hell he wants it to be.&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Welding and the automation frontier</title><url>https://www.construction-physics.com/p/welding-and-the-automation-frontier</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xyzzy123</author><text>I think the article misses the mark by not highlighting the huge difference between say, construction &amp;#x2F; site welding and manufacturing welding. It&amp;#x27;s sort of a &amp;quot;category error&amp;quot; to lump all jobs together where you happen use a welder.&lt;p&gt;A lot of manufacuring welding was already low paid and boring, you sit there with your mig gun and make the same welds over and over. Often the hiring pool is &amp;quot;unskilled&amp;quot; labour (i.e, you take people who didn&amp;#x27;t have the job title &amp;quot;welder&amp;quot;) and  they train you to operate this one station. These jobs are robot fodder and honestly that&amp;#x27;s probably a good thing.&lt;p&gt;Site or construction welding requires a lot more adaptability, e.g. ability to read plans, resolve issues when the plans are wrong, handle different materials, do layout, alignment, jigs etc and provides an endless stream of &amp;quot;one off&amp;quot; work.&lt;p&gt;(Of course there are a lot more niches than these two!).&lt;p&gt;These are barely the same market so you&amp;#x27;ll be confused by the numbers if you consider everyone to be in the &amp;quot;welder&amp;quot; labour pool.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nullc</author><text>One effect of increasing automation of mass produced parts is that the value of labor goes up because it could otherwise be employed operating mass production. As a result it can become uneconomical to perform the one-off tasks.  Even though the assembly line and the on-site are different categories, they&amp;#x27;re part of the same economy and partially compete for some of the same labor and jobs.&lt;p&gt;So for example, in the past you might have had a machinist one off you a part. But now that same skilled operator could be programming (or feeding) a couple CNC mills that put out dozens of parts an hour.  So the one off machined part is suddenly uneconomical.
(Fortunately 3D printing has reduced the specialized skills needed to produce many kinds of parts, temporarily reversing the trend for some things...)&lt;p&gt;Same happens elsewhere, I assume: pipework that might have been welded on site 50 years ago is now often assembled from bolted flanged segments (which are now cheaper due to mass production) or whatever-- even though they&amp;#x27;re more likely to leak&amp;#x2F;fail over time.&lt;p&gt;Good news for the people doing the work is that they stay busy regardless.  But for those who need the work done, the increased cost of one-off work can be problematic and make some kinds of project impossible to do profitably.</text></comment>