How to Become an Aerospace Welder
How to Become an Aerospace Welder
Aerospace welding is a highly specialized and niche skill in the field of welding. It is sometimes referred to as structural welding and involves the welding undertaken when building commercial or military aircraft, or even spacecrafts.
If you’re a skilled welder, upscaling yourself into becoming an aerospace welder could be an advantageous career path. This role is responsible for fabricating metallic components, structures, and spaceflight hardware. Aerospace or aviation welders are top-notch welders that enjoy high pay grades and work with aerospace technology in companies like airlines, aero engineering, NASA, and private spacecraft companies like SpaceX.
Its salary level is comparable with other specialized welding jobs like rig welding, underwater welding, pipeline welding, and nuclear welding, with around $100,000 per year.
So how does one become an aerospace welder?
Carving a Career Path in Aerospace Welding
Like any high-skill level job, becoming an aerospace welder requires a degree of mastery and formal education to qualify for the job.
First, you have to have a highschool diploma and pursue higher education in welding or mechanical engineering, pass the exam to get a license, gain experience through apprenticeships or working in related industries, and get certified as an aerospace welder. Some companies offer programs to qualified applicants.
The main skill requirement is proficiency and at least 3 years of experience with GTAW working on various relevant materials. These materials include stainless steel, carbon steel, aluminum, titanium, and inconel, among others.
Required Skills
Aerospace welding requires a high level of precision to ensure clean, high quality welds. Because the aircraft’s very structural integrity is hinged on the weld work, nothing short of perfection is the norm.
Fusing tiny materials, creating high temperature welds, ensuring clean welds, documenting the production, and welding based on meticulous specifications require a high level of skills and extensive experience.
Aerospace welders are required to be proficient in Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW) or Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) welding, Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) or Metal Inert Gas (MIG), and Plasma Arc Welding (PAW). They also sometimes use low amperages for greater precision and control like micro MIG, micro TIG, and micro PAW.
Other skills required for aerospace welding include blueprint literacy, numerical skills, cutting, grinding, and fabricating, and operating semi-automatic tools. As aerospace welding entails manual, analytical, and documentation work, it involves a lot of paperwork and dealing with numerical and technical specifications.
Upskill With nexAir KnowHow
At nexAir, we pride ourselves on our KnowHow. Using this unique expertise, we provide applied industry knowledge training and seminars to your team, allowing them to upgrade their skill set. We proactively work with you to equip your people with the most advanced techniques in order to improve your company’s operational efficiency, profit margins, and growth capacity.
By providing continuous education and upskilling among welding professionals to ensure they are ready for the evolving landscape of welding work, we are helping them ForgeForward. Being more than a product supplier is what sets us apart. We partner with you and invest our technical knowledge and expertise in your growth story. Because that is what ForgeForward is all about: Enabling your success. Shop TIG welder here.
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Manufacturing downtime costs American companies billions annually. When production lines halt due to gas supply issues, every minute translates to lost revenue, missed deadlines, and frustrated customers. At nexAir, we've spent decades developing solutions that keep manufacturing operations running smoothly.
The Hidden Costs of Gas-Related Downtime
When manufacturers calculate downtime costs, they typically focus on labor and lost production. However, gas supply disruptions create cascading effects that multiply these losses:
- Production rescheduling that disrupts carefully optimized sequences
- Rush shipping fees to meet customer deadlines despite delays
- Quality inconsistencies when processes restart after interruptions
- Overtime costs to catch up after unplanned stoppages
- Reputation damage when delivery commitments are missed
For a typical mid-sized manufacturer, each hour of downtime represents $5,000-$10,000 in direct and indirect costs. Our analysis shows that gas-related issues cause 7-12% of total manufacturing downtime - a substantial opportunity for improvement.
From Reactive to Proactive: The Supply Continuum
Most facilities follow a predictable pattern in their gas management evolution:
Stage 1: Reactive Management At this stage, facilities order gas when they notice supplies running low or, worse, after running out. Emergencies are common, and disruptions are accepted as "part of doing business." One automotive parts supplier operating this way experienced 14 production interruptions in a single quarter.
Stage 2: Calendar-Based Management Facilities advance to scheduled deliveries based on estimated usage. While better than the reactive approach, this method still results in either excess inventory (tying up capital and space) or shortages when usage spikes occur. A plastics manufacturer following this model maintained 40% more cylinder inventory than necessary while still experiencing occasional stockouts.
Stage 3: Consumption-Based Management Our telemetry systems monitor actual gas consumption, automatically triggering orders based on usage patterns rather than calendar dates. This approach virtually eliminates both stockouts and excess inventory.
Stage 4: Integrated Supply Management The most advanced approach connects gas management directly to production planning systems. Upcoming production requirements automatically adjust supply parameters, ensuring resources are precisely aligned with needs. A medical device manufacturer using this approach reports zero gas-related downtime for 27 consecutive months while operating with minimal inventory buffers.
Our expert KnowHow™ in industrial gas applications allows us to guide customers through this evolution at a pace that makes sense for their operations.
Customizing Solutions for Maximum Uptime
Manufacturing environments vary dramatically in their gas requirements and operational constraints. We've developed flexible approaches that address these differences:
- For high-volume, consistent usage operations, our bulk systems eliminate the cylinder handling that frequently causes supply disruptions. Bulk installations include telemetry monitoring and automated ordering to prevent outages.
- For variable-demand environments, our microbulk delivery systems provide the benefits of bulk supply with lower volume commitments. These systems reduce handling requirements while maintaining the flexibility needed for changing production schedules.
- For specialized applications requiring multiple gas types, our gas management programs combine cylinder tracking, usage monitoring, and automated replenishment. This comprehensive approach ensures that specialty gases are always available when needed, regardless of how infrequently they might be used.
- For multi-site operations, our enterprise supply programs coordinate deliveries and optimize inventory across locations. By treating the organization's gas requirements holistically, we minimize both stockouts and excess inventory across the network.
This consultative approach ensures that manufacturers receive solutions aligned with their specific operational patterns rather than generic "one-size-fits-all" systems.
Beyond Traditional Supply: Integrated Services for Total Reliability
Maximum uptime requires more than just reliable gas delivery. Our integrated services address the full spectrum of gas-related reliability factors:
Equipment maintenance programs that prevent system failures before they impact production Technical gas specialists who resolve application issues that could otherwise cause production problems Safety training that prevents accidents leading to downtime events Emergency response capabilities that minimize impacts when unexpected events occur Supply chain redundancy that ensures continuity despite regional disruptions
These services complement our supply solutions to form a comprehensive reliability strategy. By addressing both everyday operations and exceptional circumstances, we help manufacturers Forge Forward with confidence that gas-related disruptions won't derail their production targets.
Measuring Success: The Results That Matter
The ultimate measure of any downtime reduction strategy is its impact on production metrics. Our manufacturing customers consistently report significant improvements after implementing our comprehensive gas management solutions:
Downtime reductions of 85-95% for gas-related issues Inventory cost decreases of 20-30% through optimized supply management Administrative time savings of 5-10 hours weekly through automated ordering and tracking Production schedule adherence improvements of 3-7% due to improved supply reliability
These performance gains translate directly to bottom-line benefits that typically deliver ROI within months rather than years. More importantly, they allow manufacturers to confidently make delivery commitments, knowing that gas supply issues won't compromise their ability to perform.
Don't let gas supply issues impact your productivity. Contact us today to explore our tailored solutions.
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