Welding -- like the prospect of being hanged in a fortnight -- concentrates the mind wonderfully.
We can get hifalutin’ and talk about body shops and collision centers as an “industry,” riff and rant and rage over changes roiling that business, carp about annoying customers and clueless insurance companies, wax on, wax off, for our love of classic cars, but welding focuses the attention, refines one’s vision, keeps it real.
Daily grind and sexy technology meet.
Get it wrong, and nothing else matters.
Do it right, and the results are flawless.
Welding is where it all comes together.
What Happens in Vegas, Ends Up in Your Shop
On Nov. 5, it comes together at SEMA.
In a year, we couldn’t visit 2,340 booths. In a lifetime, can’t meet 165,000 attendees.
But with advance skinny and a good plan -- pro tip: get the SEMA app -- it might just be maybe manageable, and profitable and helpful and even fun, in more ways than three.
With welding, that means:
1. What’re you seeking?
2. Why do you want it?
3. How will you get it?
If you’re at SEMA to buy, an obvious possibility for many, the 1-2-3 punch is something like, what welder do you want, why, and how will you proceed -- walk the floor, which products, what sessions -- to get the thing.
A buyer’s “main focus is why are you purchasing the equipment in the first place?” Kye Yeung asks -- a little rhetorically, but then again not really: it’s an actual, and important, question.
Kye Yeung.
With four kinds of welders -- regular MIG, synergic MIG, spot-welders and TIG -- and multiple priorities or questions to answer -- power source, supply and sufficiency in your shop; types of metal; OEM certifications; training for operators and service if machines break -- permutations and possibilities grow exponentially, fast.
Yeung owns European Motor Car Works Inc., in Costa Mesa, CA. The 33,000-square-foot shop’s 25 workers fix 100 cars a month across just five brands: Aston-Martin, Lucid, Rivian, Jaguar and Land Rover.
Next year will be his 50th in the business.
“We have multiple certifications,” Yeung said. “I’m a prime example of trying to do the best-quality work, using materials specified by the OEMs.”
He said SEMA is for anyone working with vehicles, or simply “fascinated with all facets of doing so: hot rodding, restoration and collision. My forte is the third one, and I’ve done all three.”
Show-Within-A-Show-Within-A-Show
“We’ve got manufacturing, distribution and end-user, all in the same place, for four days,” said Tom Gattuso, SEMA vice president of events, whose team is producing the entire event. “It’s anyone who makes, sells and uses products.”
He said SEMA is really more like a dozen “vertical shows” under the overall big tent.
Collision repair and tools are two of the 12 verticals, with north of 400 exhibitors spanning both. Welding products and technology are part of those two -- a show, within a show, within a show.
SEMA 2024 also opens to a consumer audience on Nov. 8. Gattuso expects 10,000 to 15,000 people not part of the official attendee count to come.
One show attraction for the fascinated folk is the Diamond Lot in a parking area outside the West Hall, where off-roading teams display their builds. Working with SoCal metal fabrication training grounds The Fab School, teams will assemble roll cages in the parking lot.
“We’re helping everyone from the weekend racer to professionals,” Gattuso said of the welding worlds in Vegas next week.
What Welding Equipment Are You Looking For?
So again: who are you and what do you want? Yeung tosses the concepts about like a juggling welder.
“Regular MIGs do a great job, and cost less,” he said of the older models -- what your granddad’s body shop guy might’ve used on the Buick, let’s say.
Synergic MIG welders need fewer dials for more bells and whistles. “They calculate the best welding parameter [and are] the most badass,” Yeung said. “Even if you’re not a good welder, it makes you a great one.”
Spot welders -- formally “squeeze-type resistance spot welders” -- duplicate what was there before the crash. “You could use a MIG, but it’ll look like it’s been in an accident.”
Finally the TIG is “precise and can join many small parts; if the weld’s exposed it will have a really nice flow. Most fabricators prefer this.”
Then come the questions.
Does your shop have the right power, and enough of it, and where is it located in the shop? Extension cords diffuse power, Yeung said.
Will you work with aluminum, sheet metal, or do you want to be able to switch? Are you pursuing OEM certifications? Each has different requirements, with occasional overlap.
Subjectivity comes into play as well: people have favorite brands and are unlikely to switch, unless they’re revamping a shop or perhaps pursuing new kinds of business.
What about training and service. Will new parts come from overseas? Do distributors support what they sell?
Post-COVID and with the occasional port strike, “What’s your back-up plan?” Yeung asked. “When I walk the floor, I want to know where [a welder] was made.”
Shop Talk: Product and Technology Examples
Toby Chess has long-focused on “tools that would make a difference in repair work,” whether writing the “Kool Tools” column, attending SEMA for a decade to test new gizmos, or now running training seminars as an I-CAR instructor.
“If I had a body shop today, I’d buy an i4,” he told Autobody News, the long-produced inverter resistance spot welder from Pro Spot International Inc.
“It’s a workhorse, built to last, like an F-150 base model,” Chess said. “The Lariat or the Raptor” -- that is, the sexier new welders -- “are basically an F-150” at heart.
Chess said you might have to add elements -- “you have to buy it with a high-pressure gun” -- and you have to consider pulse technology and, echoing Yeung, what metals you’ll be working on.
The i4 is less automated than a showroom floor Pro Spot i5s, or even the i4s, which Chess said is “in a world by itself,” but newer doohickeys also “have more stuff to break.”
Chess also cites a Chief Technology-branded welder made by France-based GYS.
SCCE instructor Phil Orellana leads a training session.This is likely the MI300T, said Ian Stoffel, CEO of distributor Southern California Collision Equipment in Lake Elsinore, CA, which he co-owns with his dad Chris. The duo cover California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Hawaii, and sell some products nationally.
Newer welders like this one are going to have “lower amperage, lower draw, longer cables, [and be] lighter,” Stoffel said. And he said it will be “substantially less expensive” than, say, the top-of-the-line Pro Spot.
“You’ll be able to try it out at the booth,” he said. Chief is under the Rotary Solutions banner. Another unit will be at the SCRS booth, he added, where there’s also a raffle. Anyone who signs up for the SCRS Repair Driven Education Program gets entered to win an MI300T package valued at about $25,000.
In the end, Stoffel said, “all welders do the same thing; it’s the support afterward that matters: who’s going to be there at the end of the sale.”
“Chief has been around [more than] half a century,” Yeung said. “They’ve been around [longer] than I’ve been around. Anything they sell, they have a source to repair it.”
And answering another of Yeung’s rhetorical-but-not questions for operators, Stoffel said his distributor, SCCE, is “big on training” with a center at its SoCal facility: “computerized measuring, blueprinting, general repair, rivet bond [and] we’re doing a big push, building packages for OEM certifications.”
What Will Welding Do For You?
Training is at the heart of welding’s second question.
Once your clear(er) on why you want a welder -- what it must do, how it fits into your shop, metaphorically and literally -- what it can do for you depends on how much of yourself and your people you’re going to do for it. Stoffel’s OEM certification training is one element of that; there are others.
I-CAR is at SEMA to help.
The training stalwart has dedicated information online related to the show, and I-CAR trainers Jeff Poole and Trent Johnson are speaking, individually or on panels, on welding-related topics.
Eldon Owens, I-CAR trainer for program delivery in the Western region, at I-CAR’s booth during the 2023 SEMA Show.
Eldon Owens is I-CAR trainer for program delivery in the Western region, one of four, nationally, with the organization. He trains instructors like Poole and Johnson, who lead welding courses at SEMA.
Owens said Johnson’s course will cover the basics, and some advanced elements, with a healthy dose of theory to build a foundation. The teaching applies to auto body and collision work, as well as custom car building and auto modifiers.
By theory is meant going beyond fiddling rightly and well with knobs but learning, “how do the knobs actually work; what do they do,” Owens said. “Even the most seasoned technician, it has something for them to learn.”
After the training sessions on each of three days, participants “are invited down to the show floor, to the booth, to try out welding equipment.”
The course focuses on MIG technology and covers both older and newer equipment -- the “regular” and the “synergic” MIG welders -- while theory gets them into fundamental electrical and chemical principles.
Owens echoes Yeung, citing functionality, power supply and other considerations for back-at-the-ranch work.
The “going-forward” idea is that foundational theory, then deep basic and some advanced technique, gets body shop operators to where they or their employees can then branch out into OEM certification or the specialized welding applications -- the “nitty-gritty of certain processes,” which I-CAR doesn’t get into at the show.
“They should get a good overview” from a session, Owens said. Later, “if they become interested, instructors can come provide training at their facility -- half a day, six hours, covering whatever -- on their equipment.”
Owens said, “We’re there to ensure every technician learns to complete, safe, quality repairs for the benefit of the consumer, and get that information out to as many people as possible. If they do the training with us, that’s awesome, but we want to help them learn: can they produce a weld, use the equipment, make it safe.”
Shop Talk: Product and Technology Example
The two types of MIG welders, we’ve said, are an “old vs. new” kind of equation.
A technology gaining traction in body shop and collision center welding is a “new vs. old” idea.
Hand-held lasers.
Rex Alexandre, president and principal engineer of the Handheld Laser Institute, leads a Nov. 7 session on laser welding, part of the OEM Summit hosted by SCRS.
Rex Alexandre.
Certain aspects of old-school laser welding -- “high-precision, automated, expensive machines” including the use of robotics and in factories -- are moving toward handheld.
“This puts it in the hand of the average shop owner, with portability and lower costs, less heat or distortion, and using less power,” Alexandre said.
Traditional MIG or TIG might run on 240 volts, 50 amps. “These will run on a 30 amp,” he said.
Machines are about as big as a PC gaming unit.
Some OEMs are starting to use handheld lasers for weld repair.
“If they have a bad panel, the weld doesn’t fuse shut, so they’ll bring in the handheld,” Alexandre said.
It works on multiple metals: “aluminum, titanium, copper, stainless steel, carbon steel.”
Handhelds won’t replace arc welding, of course, but “it can become a powerful technology,” he said.
Alexandre worked with SpaceX in Texas before setting up shop as a training and development provider in Seattle. HLI does education, training, consulting and welding qualification, which can be certifying the procedure, the equipment, or the operator.
“We can help them with all three,” he said.
“I thought it was a joke in the beginning,” he added. “You know -- Chinese TikTok videos that look fake. But these welds have flown to space and come back.”
How Will the SEMA Show Help Get You There?
Next week the welds come to Vegas, where Alexandre will present on a panel with Dean Brennan, national sales manager with Massachusetts-based IPG Photonics, and I-CAR’s Poole on the laser welding panel.
Want more big tech?
I-CAR will also be doing virtual reality demonstrations -- related to training it conducts in Chicago -- near its welding work in the booth.
Gattuso brings it back to earth with some old-school counsel. He’s got some two decades in trade show and event production, and to be honest, geeks out a bit on the phone with a reporter, over how shows come together, that old-and-new superseding “old v. new” perhaps.
The Upper South Hall is for Collision Repair and Tools and Equipment, and SCRS, just across from SEMA’s Collision Repair Stage, will, he says, have a Rivian “where they’ve taken the body off the frame to show how the car was assembled, welded, put together.”
Rivian engineers will be at the booth to discuss “what the modern weld looks like on a brand new car.”
Want less big tech?
Gattuso recommends and reminds attendees to take a walk.
“Find your tribe, yes, and we’ve got that. Then go out and see what’s happening overall,” he said. “There’s still the opportunity for the serendipitous approach to just walking the show floor. You need a couple hours just to do that.”
Yeung used the same language -- “So you’re walking the show floor” -- to say how shop owners can find the kind of welding products they need.
“You need to have those conversations,” Gattuso said, “where you ask the guy, ‘why is the button the left-hand side? You know, I always bump my hand on it.’”
One More Thing Before You Go
Just one more thing...
Here are welding-related educational efforts at SEMA.
Here are welding-related exhibitors on the show floor.
Just to name a few:
Spanesi came up a couple times in conversation with sources for this article.
Abicor Binzel responded to a request for information, sending along images.
Michael Cooper, president of H&S Autoshot Manufacturing Co., said via email the company will have “‘multifunction MIG, TIG and Stick welders [and] synergic programming” along with other products at its booth. Cooper will be there as well, with a demo welding table and certified welder.
Trumpf highlights via email the presence of its TruArc Weld 1000, including live demos and a “fully electric Land Rover conversion” completed with company technology, according to material from Tommy Zoladz, advanced applications engineer, and Daniel Pfisterer, national sales manager for power tools.
“We’re really liking what we’re seeing” from the show, Gattuso said.
Paul Hughes