This Book is About:

Welcome to our “Introduction to Welding” text, which will help you to explore the basics of a career as a welder. You’ll get to know more about Welding and how many industries rely on welders in order to function. Learning goals for this book include:

• Recognize safe/unsafe working practices and conditions in a welding environment. (Part 1)
• Describe commonly used welding equipment for manual and semi-automatic welding, as well as shop tools and equipment. (Part 2)
• Explain the fundamentals of common manual and semi-automatic welding processes. (Part 3)
• Describe common thermal cutting equipment and its use. (Part 4)
• Explain how the welding industry communicates fabrication requirements through standard weld types and positions, interpretation of welding blueprints, inspection methods and codes. (Part 5)
• Describe the characteristics and weldability of commonly used materials and their best practices in the welding industry. (Part 6)

This Book is For:

“Introduction to Welding” is an essential guide for you as you start your Welding program or explore career options in Welding. This full-color text provides a comprehensive introduction to the foundational concepts that are common across the Welding profession. It serves as a solid base for further learning in specific courses and is a great foundation for working in welding shops. The book’s goal is to offer an introduction so that you can familiarize yourself with key concepts before you begin more complex coursework.

This Book is Unique Because:

Welding teachers with broad workplace experience wrote “Introduction to Welding.” It incorporates current industry needs in its content. The book describes processes and issues that you will find throughout the many different welding jobs that you might encounter, although there is a specific focus on welding jobs in Washington state. This book aims to help you understand the basics so that you can practice safely and effectively in your shop classroom and in the industry.

How We Address Identity:

As authors, designers, and advocates for our learners we want to express our approach towards references to identity. We feel it is necessary to discuss race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, age and/or disability, or the intersectionality of these identities and lived experiences, to provide context to our use of identity in this textbook. How we describe and confirm individual identity, much like this text, evolves and the way that we identify ourselves and show respect for an individual’s experience may change.

We understand that individuals within groups often have differing preferences for language use. There is diversity when it comes to expression and individual people or collectives may opt for language that differs from our written language, such as the use of identity-first language, as they attempt to reclaim power from the people and terms that have been used to support institutional and systemic repression. In contrast, during the writing of our text it has been most appropriate to emphasize the individual, focusing on person-first language. This follows one of many best practices outlined by APA’s style guide for Bias-Free Language that has informed our approach to referencing identity within this text. As such, you will see examples of person-first language throughout, such as “they identify as…” or “individuals who identify as…” as a result. We aim to only reference identity when academically warranted and when we do, a single element of an individual’s self-expression does not supersede their entire identity.

In summary, there will always be inherent friction that manifests when attempting to describe something as fluid as identity in a singular moment in time, but we believe that by elevating the individual we can ensure we are not opening our work up to our internal biases and stereotyping the vibrant and unique people that we are writing this textbook for. This statement is a lasting commitment to being part of that evolution and ensuring our text is maintained to continue to support those that interact with our work. If you encounter writing that you feel is misaligned to our mission, please reach out so we can continue this important work.

Cover Image Attribution: Welding by Gustavo Fernando Durán, CC BY NC SA 2.0