Comment by tmh88j | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tmh88j | Hacker News Reader

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>If for whatever reason lead is unavoidable in a project, make sure you're using good ventilation and wash thoroughly before going around your kids after you've handled lead.

I worked for a welding company and a significant portion of the engineering training involved attending welding school, which also included classes about the chemistry and physics of welding. They drilled into our heads the dangers from long term exposure to elements and chemicals in the fumes such as manganese and cadmium, and I even recall them mentioning lawsuits brought upon them that the company won, which I guess somehow disproves the danger. Anyway, if there's one thing I learned it's that I'd never allow my family members to become professional welders if I have a say. That stuff is nasty and a dirty "secret". Not to mention, a huge number of welders develop cataracts, but that could be due to incorrect shade usage and one one's fault to blame but the weldor....which I guess you could point back and say that's a result of improper training. Either way, I think welding is fun and a great skill to have, but I'd never do it for a living regardless of the pay.

edit - I should add this mostly applies to flux based welding such as stick and FCAW

My dad is a welder, and he's always been a stickler for his own health; at his previous company (which went under, unfortunately, he had worked there for 40 years) he had a strong extractor (on a hose so it could be moved close to his work) and a positive pressure / filtered hood - always on.

He's had 'welding eyes' (basically sunburn?) and he's had metal splinters in his eyes, but besides that he seems to be in good health still.

He did have to insist on better ventilation and a positive pressure welding mask at his current job though; he's been complaining about fatigue, which cleared up right when he started using that one. If I had known he was made to work like that I would probably have bought him one myself, but OTOH it's a matter of workplace safety / worker health so he could've kicked off about it himself.

> 'welding eyes' (basically sunburn?)

Like a more concentrated sunburn. A welding torch will create much higher intensity UV than you're typically exposed to, and you're staring right at it. So instead of your skin, it burns the cornea directly. I've always heard it called "flash burn" after the flash caused by welding.

Why don't they just make a welding mask that uses goggles with a video feed so you don't have to be exposed to any UV?

I don't claim to be a welding expert, but the immediate and obvious answer to "why don't they simply do X", where X is more expensive and more complex than the current solution, is that for those reasons X isn't going to catch on.

True. Also if I was 3M or Bosch and going to invest in a project like this I would want exclusive IP. There is already an incredible tech demo of this that may inhibit corporate investment: https://hackaday.com/2012/09/11/augmented-reality-welding-ma...

Using computer vision, it looks at the flow rate and arc of the weld and turns any mediocre welder into a good welder.

Having been in a power plant factory in China (which is to say a factory that makes power plants) - bad welds are still very much a problem and a system like this could go miles to improve the craftsmanship of medium skill work there. In the US or Germany a headset like this may cost a few grand (going by Dräger Xplore 8000 prices) but even if China finds a way to get them down to $200 (as with the Shanzhai AR headsets) it's still nearly a months salary for a worker - questionable if an operation would spring for it if they're cutting costs so many other places.

Because an inexpensive auto-darkening welding helmet will provide full protection against IR and UV.

Welding is a highly-skilled precision process. Welders look at the color of the molten steel, the color and brightness of the arc, the flow of the steel, and even the smell. No video feed will have high enough resolution, latency and refresh rate, or color reproduction and brightness fidelity for the task.

Maybe it doesn’t need to? If a computer can simply look at the weld with sensors and detect attributes it can overlay them on the video feed for a welder to see. Then you can turn welding into a lower skill process and create more job opportunities.

    > If a computer can simply

I believe that the term "simple" is being applied incorrectly here.

>Welding is a highly-skilled precision process. And, yet, every automobile on the roads today has had some portion or it's frame welded by a robot. Not just spot welds, full on GMAW, and for hundreds/thousands of vehicles a day.

>No video feed will have high enough resolution, latency and refresh rate, or color reproduction and brightness fidelity for the task. Counter example: robotic surgery. Sure, there's fewer UV, IR and X-rays, but it's only a matter of time before a better CCD/CMOS sensor and lense comes along.

There is a difference between welding the same part automatically millions of times with exact, very tight known constraints that are always the same, and doing small batches and one off custom welds.

The two are not comparable.

Welding is hard. Dealing with a video feed is not something I want to be doing.

You're supposed to use a welding mask

Welding masks already block UV. People get arc flashes when they make mistakes in using the equipment -- striking an arc with their helmet up, or someone else in the area striking an arc when they're not wearing theirs. Video goggles would suffer from the same weakness :)

Actually the wouldn't...the point would be to always have them on from the minute you walk in the door.

You can do that with the auto-darkening welding helmets that are currently in common use. But people don't, because it's annoying.

Can happen in snowy places too, we call it snow blindness

I think snow blindness gets the retinas more than the corneas. Had it once. Not nice.

”I even recall them mentioning lawsuits brought upon them that the company won, which I guess somehow disproves the danger.”

I would guess they won the lawsuits by showing that they had good safety rules and made all reasonable efforts to have their personnel obey them, not by convincing the court/jury that these jobs are risk-free.

I was a welder for two years and after the first year I already started to notice a mental and physical decline in my health. Unfortunately, I was not a union welder and the company that I worked for did not educate or enforce proper use of safety gear. It was an eye opening experience for me and I’m glad to have experienced it, but knowing that my health was being put at risk is frustrating.

> Unfortunately, I was not a union welder and the company that I worked for did not educate or enforce proper use of safety gear.

That's just infuriating. How bad of a human being do you need to be to knowingly expose people to health hazards and still only offer basic safety training if an union gets involved?

> Unfortunately, I was not a union welder

This looks like a quote from a Victor Hugo book, about working in the XIX century.

> mentioning lawsuits brought upon them that the company won

Perhaps something like "Please follow the safety rules. If you don't follow them and you hurt yourself, you won't get a huge payday, just bad injuries that your brought on yourself"?

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