Customer Stories

VRTEX Transport Virtual Reality Welding Trainer

Lincoln Electric Education Portal is Career Center’s “North Star”

When Julio Martinez needs equipment, consumables and curriculum to teach welding at Polaris Career Center in Middleburg Heights, Ohio, he calls on a resource just across town: Lincoln Electric, whose recently re-launched education portal provides a wealth of resources at affordable education-only pricing.

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Make Your Mark™ Series: Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School

It’s a common practice for welding instructors to have industry welding experience. Today, it’s also common among career and technical schools to provide professional development opportunities for instructors, allowing even experienced teachers to advance their lab and classroom skills.

Make Your Mark Series Meet Tom Spadoni

Tom is a welding and shipfitting instructor for the Chariho Career and Technical Center (CHARIHOtech) in Wood River Junction, Rhode Island, a certified Career and Technical Education (CTE) institution.

VRTEX® Virtual Reality Welding Simulator Helps Make Welding A Reality At Boys Town®

For a century, Boys Town® has provided support and education to at-risk youth, giving them the tools they need to succeed as adults.
While the boys (and girls since 1979) come to Boys Town with a variety of personal or family issues, the organization is driven by the credo of its founder, Father Edward Flanagan: There is no such thing as a bad child...

IUEC Instructor Randy Cristolini Takes His Training To The Next Level

Randy Cristolini has to stay on top of his own welding training before he can train union apprentices.
Randy is an elevator instructor for the International Union of Elevator Constructors (IUEC) in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. He is one of about 800 IUEC instructors nationwide. IUEC conducts training on behalf of the ...

Lincoln Electric And Ohio FFA Collaborate To Give Back To The Community

Every state FFA organization runs some form of Agricultural Mechanics Engineering CDE (Career Development Event) Project. The team responsible for the Ohio competition designed a program that runs a little differently than just about any other state.

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REALWELD Breaks Through Knowledge Gap Boosting Welder Employability

“The REALWELD Trainer allows you to help a student focus on technique but also teach them about the
variables needed to make a ‘good’ weld,” says Scott Laslo, assistant professor and coordinator of the Skilled Trades department at Columbus State Community College.

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Ohio Technical College Turning Virtual Novices Into Welding Experts

Ohio Technical College turns novices into welders, and they do it with help from Lincoln Electric’s virtual reality welding training systems.
Based in Cleveland, OTC delivers training, certification and job placement in more than 15 areas of certification, including high-performance automotive, auto restoration and structural welding...

Valencia Colleges New Advanced Manufacturing Training Center Fills Crucial Need

At the height of the Great Recession, Florida had lost more than half of its construction jobs and about one quarter of its manufacturing positions. New buildings and houses weren’t going up, and construction workers fled the area to find jobs. Many in the state worried that its manufacturing industry would never bounce back and that the skilled workers were gone...

Ivy Tech Community College Builds A New Generation Of Welders

With thousands of skilled welders aging out of the labor pool, Indiana-based Ivy Tech Community College is building a new workforce for the 21st century – not just for the school’s home-state, but for much of the upper Midwest. They’re doing it with the help of equipment and technology from Lincoln Electric®...

WyoTech Vocational School Welding

Hidden in remote Blairsville, Pennsylvania, Jeff Gruenewald has lived eight months in a small, one-room apartment 650 miles from his friends and family. Like hundreds of his classmates, who have also taken temporary housing, each morning the St. Louis native dresses in his requisite red and blue uniform to attend classes 30 miles from the nearest Interstate...

Make Your Mark Series Meet Tyler Blais

Tyler Blais aspires to work with his hands in a creative fashion, and he believes welding is the skill to help that dream come true. His career is getting off the ground thanks to classes at the Lincoln Electric Welding Technology and Training Center (WTTC) in Cleveland, Ohio.

Lenape Technical Welding School Uses Virtual Welding To Prepare High School Students

Virtual Welding Prepares High School Students for Welding Careers. “While there obviously is still a need for actual arc time, the VRTEX® has eliminated a lot of the waste that was associated with this practice in the past.”...

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Parma High School: A New Generation Of Welders In Northeast Ohio

Parma, Ohio, Cleveland’s largest suburb, has been a blue-collar industrial center since the middle of the 20th century. Located along Cleveland’s southern border, Parma has a long history of producing outstanding skilled tradespersons...

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Tulsa Welding School: Technology & Curriculum Are Key

If you want to be a doctor, you go to medical school. If you want to be an artist, you go to art school and if you want to be in marketing, you go to business school. But where do aspiring welding professionals go for an education? They go to welding school...

NASCAR Technical Institute Relies on Lincoln

Eclipsing its status as the fastest growing sport in the United States, NASCAR® has become one of the nation's largest businesses, boasting more than $3 billion in annual revenue. NASCAR® racing as a sport has developed into an entertainment and marketing giant with a supporting culture that extends...

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Pitt Community College Uses VRTEX 360

North Carolina’s Pitt Community College Uses VRTEX® 360 to Introduce Basic Welding Skills Before Students Enter the Actual Welding Booth. At Pitt Community College in Eastern North Carolina, the shortage of skilled welders combined with aftershocks from the area’s challenged economy have created a perfect scenario: rapidly growing enrollments in the school’s welding associate’s degree and certification training programs...

Tulsa Welding School Offers World-Class Curriculum for Aspiring Welders

FFA Students Take Advantage of School's Training and Numerous Job Opportunities. It's not often that you hear of a school that has 1,500 job openings from employers that it can not fill with available graduates. This is exactly the situation that Tulsa Welding School (TWS) of Tulsa, Oklahoma faced in 1999...

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Michigan Community College Arms Welding Students to Hit the Ground Running

Long-Time Partnership with Lincoln Electric Allows School to Train Students on the Latest Welding Technology. With the increasing cost of a traditional college education and retraining of America's existing manufacturing and fabrication workforce, community colleges around the country have seen a huge spike in enrollment...

Local IBEW Training Center Adds Welding Skills to Curriculum

Why would a commercial electrician need welding skills? This is the question many asked Terry Akins, an Instructor with the Kansas City Joint Apprenticeship Training Center (KCJATC), in Kansas City, Mo., as he lobbied to add welding to the course curriculum and dedicate a portion of the Center's new addition to the skill...

Jeff Gordon Racing School Chooses Lincoln

Cleveland, OH – On May 20, 2005, four-time NASCAR Champion Jeff Gordon announced he is opening a driving school designed to provide the most exciting and entertaining experience in the motorsports world. "The NASCAR experience has always been exhilarating for me," said Gordon...

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Iowa State University Utilizes VRTEX® 360 to Teach Ag-Mechanics Teachers

Virtual Reality Welding Helps Future Ag-Ed Teachers Prepare for Upcoming Careers. When first introduced in 1911, the Agricultural Education program at Iowa State University had one primary focus to develop a comprehensive curriculum that would help prepare future agricultural teachers for a successful career...

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Alabama’s Wallace State Community College: Investing in the Future Workforce

Alabama’s Wallace State Community College Puts Latest Welding Education Technologies to Work in New Laboratory Facility. The sluggish economy hasn’t put a damper on the need for workers in the skilled trades. Nor has it slowed enrollment in welding education programs

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Erie Institute of Technology Trains Today's Welders

In any region boasting a strong industrial base, the need for skilled welders is a given. Erie, Pennsylvania, is no exception. This city on the shores of Lake Erie has thrived for years on a heavy manufacturing sector...

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Enterprise High School: Virtual Reality Welding Brings New Life to a "Rebuilt" Welding Program

Virtual Reality Welding Brings New Life to a "Rebuilt" Welding Program. On March 1, 2007, the community of Enterprise, Ala., encountered the unthinkable—an EF4 tornado decimated the town’s high school, killing eight students and injuring more than 150 others.

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Cuyahoga Community College: Top-Notch Education in the Ways of Welding

Top-Notch Education in the Ways of Welding
Backed by state-of-the-art equipment, a new training laboratory at Cuyahoga Community College addresses the welding-workforce challenge in Northeast Ohio...

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College of the Canyons: California Community College Prepares Welding Workforce

Incorporates new automated technology curriculum into degree/certification programs. At College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, California, welding has been a cornerstone of the school’s career technical education (CTE) program for more than 30 years – a symbol of the college’s commitment to fostering regional economic development on numerous level...

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U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer and Welder: Stacey-Ann McNish-Rodriguez

A Different Path
Stacey-Ann McNish-Rodriguez is a chief warrant officer in the U.S. Army... and she is a welder. "With all the new processes learned here, I can take those back to the Army and improve on the training for the Allied Trades Specialist program."...

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Carolina Energy Tackles Welding Shortage, Opens its Own School

"Where have all the welders gone?" In late summer 2006, this Wall Street Journal headline screamed a problem that the industry had long been aware of - the critical shortage of skilled welders...

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Carpenters Union Incorporates Innovative Education Tool

Virtual Training: Carpenters Union Incorporates Innovative Education Tool to Prep Students for Crucial Welding Skills and Certification. "We train Millwrights, carpenters, pile drivers and interior systems carpenters. That’s four different types of welding, and the VRTEX® training system covers it all."...

UpRight Inc: Focused Training Yields Big Results

For a company that already had a shortage of skilled MIG operators and low welding production rates, UpRight Inc., a manufacturer of aerial lifting platforms, faced an even bigger challenge when management decided to increase production rates starting in January of 2000...

Local Carpenters Training Center Sets New Standards For Welding Training With Virtual Reality

Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters elevates welding training with Lincoln Electric’s VRTEX® 360 Welding Training Simulator. At the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters Apprentice and Training Center in Elk Grove, Ill., instructors and apprentices are preparing for...