Arc weld
Veteran Member
252's are extremely popular in Alberta and it's one of the biggest welding markets in the world! People have come to rely on Miller equipment. Alberta is also on the forefront for the newest and latest innovations in welding. The tech school here needed to expand and spent $10 million on their state of the art welder training facility. It's called the NAIT Waiward Center for Steel Technologies. The Waiward name is added because Waiward Steel is a huge structural steel contractor that donated $1,000,000 to the new facility. There's even a story about the new facility on the Miller site. One of the sales managers I worked for said Northern Alberta alone is a $5 billion+ market for welding. When they're doing expansions in the oil sands, it's not millions, it's billions!
The 400 series torches may not be plastic but they look like plastic. Anything plastic looking on a cutting torch makes it look cheap. There was never anything said to imply that plastic wasn't a good material for other welding related applications. It's an aluminum/zinc alloy called Zamac. They are also listed as medium and heavy duty torches. What happens if you're left handed and hit the valves with your arm when making a cut? Even in one of their promotional pictures it shows a right handed person cutting. If you did the exact same photo with a left handed person, their arm would right against the valves. Most professional welders prefer the valves pointing down. They're out of the way and won't get bumped by your arm. Also puts the torch in a safe position for lighting with the flame pointing down (right handed users). Still with a round barrel you can position the valves where ever you prefer. The red and green valves isn't such a bad idea but putting which way to turn them? The new Purox have also gone to a 3 tube inline design with color coded valves. Is this a reflection on the people going into welding not being too bright?
How come on the box and in literature for Thermal Dynamics plasma machines, it says they invented plasma cutting in 1957? Thermal Dynamics was incorporated in 1957 so I suspect that maybe the people involved were working with Linde on developing Plasma? What's interesting is in 1968 an engineer working for Union Carbide came up with a great innovation for plasma cutting and Union Carbide had little to no interest in it. Thus he left to form Hypertherm and they are now the market leader in plasma cutting. Union Carbide, plasma? Hypertherm have more engineers in R&D than all other manufacturers combined (120+).
Sometimes having several brands under one name is good, other times it's good to have them as a separate identity. If you have a market leader, it's usually a good idea to keep the name. Thermal Dynamics used to be a market leader in plasma. Now Arcair and Stoody are going to go under the Tweco banner? Those are two of the most widely recognized names in the industry. Tweco is widely recognized as well but not for gouging or hardfacing. Changing the name may have more of a negative effect than a positive one. I guess time will tell. Same with Miller if they drop the Smith, Bernard, Weld Craft, Tregaskiss, etc. names.
A good example of poor marketing strategy is Honda. Honda tried to integrate all their divisions into one big dealership and were forcing existing dealers to spend big bucks and some smaller dealers to close. First they tried it in Europe and it didn't work so naturally they tried it again in Canada. After about 2 years the car dealers that took on the motorcycles and power equipment wanted nothing to do with it. This is proof that sometimes it's better to have separate divisions. Selling anything Honda is almost like having a ticket to print money. When you have something that works, why mess with it? If it's not working, changing the name might not be the most effective way to change that.
The 400 series torches may not be plastic but they look like plastic. Anything plastic looking on a cutting torch makes it look cheap. There was never anything said to imply that plastic wasn't a good material for other welding related applications. It's an aluminum/zinc alloy called Zamac. They are also listed as medium and heavy duty torches. What happens if you're left handed and hit the valves with your arm when making a cut? Even in one of their promotional pictures it shows a right handed person cutting. If you did the exact same photo with a left handed person, their arm would right against the valves. Most professional welders prefer the valves pointing down. They're out of the way and won't get bumped by your arm. Also puts the torch in a safe position for lighting with the flame pointing down (right handed users). Still with a round barrel you can position the valves where ever you prefer. The red and green valves isn't such a bad idea but putting which way to turn them? The new Purox have also gone to a 3 tube inline design with color coded valves. Is this a reflection on the people going into welding not being too bright?
How come on the box and in literature for Thermal Dynamics plasma machines, it says they invented plasma cutting in 1957? Thermal Dynamics was incorporated in 1957 so I suspect that maybe the people involved were working with Linde on developing Plasma? What's interesting is in 1968 an engineer working for Union Carbide came up with a great innovation for plasma cutting and Union Carbide had little to no interest in it. Thus he left to form Hypertherm and they are now the market leader in plasma cutting. Union Carbide, plasma? Hypertherm have more engineers in R&D than all other manufacturers combined (120+).
Sometimes having several brands under one name is good, other times it's good to have them as a separate identity. If you have a market leader, it's usually a good idea to keep the name. Thermal Dynamics used to be a market leader in plasma. Now Arcair and Stoody are going to go under the Tweco banner? Those are two of the most widely recognized names in the industry. Tweco is widely recognized as well but not for gouging or hardfacing. Changing the name may have more of a negative effect than a positive one. I guess time will tell. Same with Miller if they drop the Smith, Bernard, Weld Craft, Tregaskiss, etc. names.
A good example of poor marketing strategy is Honda. Honda tried to integrate all their divisions into one big dealership and were forcing existing dealers to spend big bucks and some smaller dealers to close. First they tried it in Europe and it didn't work so naturally they tried it again in Canada. After about 2 years the car dealers that took on the motorcycles and power equipment wanted nothing to do with it. This is proof that sometimes it's better to have separate divisions. Selling anything Honda is almost like having a ticket to print money. When you have something that works, why mess with it? If it's not working, changing the name might not be the most effective way to change that.
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