Cost Saving Tips for your Next Welding Project

Custom-designed-solutions are the elite gold standard when it comes to investing in welded products for your business. Off-the-shelf, or catalogue, products are often a quick fix for general practice. It is worth the expense to invest in your niche, industry-specific needs. The is no questioning the value attached to identifying ways to increase productivity, safety or turnaround (or even all three). However, there is nothing better than working with a professional who cares about your specific circumstances to guide your decision-making.

It is always worthwhile reviewing how and where to invest more time and money when planning a custom manufactured welding solution. Conversely, it is just as valuable to examine where you may feasibly expect to mitigate some expense.

No matter the site-specific constraints, every welding outcome is usually approached with the same goal in mind: to produce as high quality a solution as you can, for the best price achievable. This is why we’ve put together cost saving tips for your next welding project.

The Value of Strategy

How might you reasonably and safely approach the mammoth task of sifting through the elements of a welding project? How might you safely determine which are the integral, “big ticket” features on your project? How can you be sure which parts are the lower-hanging fruit more easily cut away to lighten the investment?

The task of cost-cutting can be a tempting exercise to jump into, but it must be approached with some level of expertise and consideration. If not done well, the risk of cutting the “wrong” costs is to produce an outcome that creates its own false economy and ends up costing more (much more) in the long run. These extra costs can include more time and more money spent attempting to fix oversights… and can also rack up in terms of safety and liability.

This is why a healthy relationship with a welding expert is an intrinsic part of saving costs on your next welding project! Whether it’s a metal pallet cage, crane spreader beam or a range of steel drum handling equipment, every item must be compliant.

Welding: Expert Skill and Scientific Art

Welding experts are familiar with both the skill of welding and the science of welding. Welding is, at its core, a fabrication process that bonds two pieces of metal.

A professionally-skilled welder is able to manoeuvre and strategise your design. This allows them to best control side effects of the bond, such as warping. Warping and distortion in the metal and the weld inevitably occur due to the high temperatures involved in the task. The skill to judge that distortion, and even use it to benefit the end design, can provide valuable insight when reigning in costs during the design phase. For example, this skill can allow the welder to approach the initial design with an understanding of the end goal, and approach the task in a way that minimises overwelding as well as providing weld quality assurance.

Overwelding, for example, leads to significant consumable waste. Overwelding is also most often the result of a lower-skilled welder “covering” themselves, to ensure enough metal has been welded for the load. Not only does this poor practice rack up costs in consumable waste and additional labour, but it also inevitably leads to higher rates of uncontrolled warpage and distortion with the added heat input.

How to Save Money on your Next Welding Project

So how might you use your relationship with a trusted welding expert to save money on your next project?

1. Discuss the end goal of your brief, not just the design you would expect to see.
2. If this is a project you’ve done before, supply those previous working drawings and allow your consultant to review for ways to create more efficiencies in the design.
3. Allow your consultant to make recommendations in the design such as preparing joints with bevels to reduce the amount of metal needed to for the weld, or eliminating extra welds to simplify the outcome.
4. Be prepared to ask your consultant to explain their reasoning in design elements that they have suggested. This may help you better gauge your expectations against the outcome.

Allowing your expert welding consultant to audit your proposal or brief against some of these considerations will lead to a greater opportunity to reduce costs, while allowing design elegance and innovation to shine through.

Conclusion

Bremco’s custom welding consultants take pride in using the latest technology, and we perform constant reviews of our design solutions against the latest sophistications in welding performance. Our solutions are designed, tested, certified and engineer-approved each and every time and our compliance often exceed the requirements of the relative Australian Standard or international guidelines.

We take pride in using our expertise with your team to find the best custom solution outcome to meet your needs.