How to Be a Metal Fabrication Welding Pro

A metal fabrication welder must layout, shape, form, and weld different kinds of metal into the correct structural shapes and sizes. These metal structures are used in heavy machinery and appliances such as ovens, in addition to parts for buildings, pipes, stacks, tanks and many other products.

Properly equipped and trained metal fabrication welders can create and perfect high quality products over a number of industries and businesses. As with any highly skilled professions, there are rigorous skills that need to be mastered to be successful. In order to become a metal fabrication welder, one must have a few prerequisite skills:

• Expert fabrication welding professionals can create and assemble structural metal products and prepare blueprints as needed. Trained professionals need to be able to use triangulation, parallel line development, and radial line development to lay out the designs for a product.
• Professional welders must know the physical properties of the metal they are working with and how to figure the stock needed when calibrating a machine to fabricate parts. Using the fabrication equipment properly is a basic tenet of professional metal fabrication welders.
• A professional welder must handle shears, press brakes, rollers, lasers, abrasive water jet cutting machines, and automatic welding machines. Using these tools effectively to fabricate products involves a high degree of understanding of basic trade mathematics such as trigonometry and geometry.
• Welders have to be able to perform intricate work production of sheet metal cabinets, shelving, pipes, ducts, etc. These metal products are difficult to fabricate due to the attention to detail they may require.
• Welders must also have at least a basic understanding of blueprint reading, welding symbols, sketching, and metallurgy. Skilled professional welders must be able to create and read blueprints in order to understand what product they are fabricating and for what purpose.