Noah Johnson Daily Press Bay College Welding Instructor Nick DuPont demonstrates cutting a piece of metal.

ESCANABA – Bay College partners with Michigan Tech University (MTU) to provide welding workshops for Michigan workers.

The most recent workshop focused on training individuals who were for the state.

“This is a 16-hour training. It will give them a general overview of hands-on welding techniques,” said Bay Business Development Manager Renee Lundberg.

This is the third year Bay and MTU have partnered to put on a welding workshop.

Typically, Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) employees attend the training, but other agencies and organizations can participate.

Individuals from a U.P. road commission, a Michigan state park, and MTU attended the training.

“We go through several series of different welding processes with them. We go over shielded metal arc welding, flux arc welding, and then also we will get in the gas tungsten arc welding,” said Bay Welding Instructor Nick DuPont.

The workshop is split between a classroom portion and a hands-on welding portion. DuPont first goes over the task in the classroom before heading to the shop to demonstrate how to do different welding tasks.

“Every time before they use something hands-on, we talk about that process. Just like I do with my students during the regular semester, we cover some theory-based knowledge of it, and then we put that theory to practice,” DuPont said.

On the second day of class, participants were practicing plasma arc cutting.

After that, DuPont said the students would try their hands at oxygen fuel and air carbon-cutting.

“The three separate cutting processes that are commonly used in the industry that should make their jobs a lot easier when they see the need for it,” DuPont said.

He added that the participants had not welded before, so the workshop served as an introduction to the field and gave them an overview of the different methods and terminology.

DuPont ends the seminar by talking about welding defects and discontinuities.

“I really want them to latch onto that. So then they know what to look for in welds that are defective. They know how to fix them, and they know how to prevent them in the first place, too,” he said.

He sends students home with an over 100-page packet outlining what they learned in the workshop.

After completing the course, the students will receive a certificate, but that does not mean they are certified welders.

“We’re up-skilling. We are introducing them to maybe something they are not familiar with but possibly have to do on the job,” Lundberg said.

The students were very engaged in the workshop and eager to learn new skills.

“The whole goal is to just get them as much content as we can. That’s digestible,” DuPont said.

Lundberg said Bay wants to offer programs like this on its own in the future.

“We would like to be able to offer this in our area in the future, and we are looking at scheduling something to see what interest is out there in our own workforce area,” she said.