Welding and joining processes are used to fabricate almost all manufactured products. The recent development of new automated manufacturing methods has made welding more important than ever before. The courses in this specialization are intended to prepare students to work in all areas related to welding and joining, including welding and joining processes (including robotic welding), welding metallurgy, and welding design and fabrication and quality control. The specialization is the only one of its type in Canada and compares well with programs in Europe and the US. Students who select a defined set of courses in the Welding and Joining Specialization are awarded a Certificate of completion of the Welding and Joining Specialization.
Welding and joining is an important aspect in almost all manufactured products - from custom products such as pressure vessels, aircraft, ships and medical devices to high volume products such as automotive parts, appliances, food packaging and micro-electronics. As new products, manufacturing methods and materials are developed, suitable welding and joining processes and procedures must be adopted. Welding design, new welding specifications, process development and trouble-shooting are generally undertaken by Welding Engineers.
In most industrialized countries, the need for qualified Welding Engineers has led to university programs in Welding Engineering. For example, the European Union has developed a post-graduate curriculum for a “European Welding Engineer (EWE)”. This program includes over 390 hours of instruction and 60 hours of hands-on experience in a wide range of topics related to welding. The International Institute of Welding (IIW) has adopted the European Welding Engineering program. An International Welding Engineer (IWE) must now certify most welded products made in Europeancountries, especially if the welded product is to be exported for sale in other European countries and other countries around the world. Thus, there is a need to train and certify IWEs in all countries that produce and export welded products including Canada.
In a survey of the Canadian welding industry, it was found that there is currently an unfilled need for between 10 and 20 qualified Welding Engineers per year in Canada. This shortage will be further exacerbated with the new requirements for IWEs. Currently, the main demand for Welding Engineers appears to be at the Bachelors Degree level.
In the manufacturing sector, a Welding Engineer should be knowledgeable in machine design and manufacturing methods, as well as materials, heat transfer, electricity and controls, all of which are core courses in the Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Degree program at the University of Waterloo. Building on these and other core courses, the Welding & Joining Specialization offers a set of specialized courses to train students in advanced knowledge related to welding and joining processes. Through the Welding & Joining Specialization, UW has been providing B.A.Sc level Mechanical Engineers to the Canadian welding & joining industry.
The Welding & Joining Specialization is normally completed as part of the Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate program at the University of Waterloo. Thus, the core program of Mechanical Engineering is the core for the Welding & Joining Specialization.
Required and recommended courses for the Welding & Joining Specialization are listed in Table 1. Mechanical Engineering students who complete all of the required courses will receive a special Certificate of Completion of the Welding & Joining Specialization, in addition to their Bachelor of Applied Science Diploma in Mechanical Engineering.
There are five 4th year technical electives (TE) required for the Welding & Joining Specialization. These courses include the normal lecture hours plus (in total) about 60 hours of hands-on laboratory work. Students must take ME 436 - Welding and Joining Processes and ME 435 – Industrial Metallurgy in their 4A Mechanical Engineering term. In their 4B term, students must take ME 526 – Fatigue and Fracture Analysis, ME 535 - Welding Metallurgy and ME 538 - Welding Design, Fabrication and Quality Control. Much of the hands-on laboratory work for ME 436 and ME 538 is carried out at the Guelph campus of Conestoga College (about 30 minutes drive). Laboratories associated with the other courses are at the University of Waterloo.
Table 1: The Welding and Joining Specialization Courses.
4A Term |
|
4B Term |
A welding or joining related project can be undertaken in the 4th term core course ME 481 - Mechanical Engineering Design Project. This is recommended, but not required. In addition, many manufacturers are moving to more automated welding procedures. Thus, students enrolled in the Welding & Joining Specialization are also encouraged to take the technical elective course in robotics, i.e., ME 547 – Robotic Manipulators: Kinematics, Dynamics, Control.
The Welding and Joining Specialization courses and all other courses required in 4 th year Mechanical Engineering curriculum are shown in Table 2. ME 481 is a required technical elective course. In addition to taking ME 435 and ME 436 in 4A, students are free to take one technical elective in another area of interest. In 4B, students must take ME 526, ME 535 and ME 538, but are free to take two other technical electives of their own choice. Note that all courses required for the Welding & Joining Specialization fit into the normal CSE and TE courses required for the Mechanical Engineering program. Extra courses are not required for the Welding & Joining Specialization.
Table 2: The Welding and Joining Specialization courses in the 4A and 4B Mechanical Engineering curriculum.
| Term | Required Courses in the 4A and 4B Terms | ||||||
| Spring | 4A | ME 481* | ME 435 | ME 436 | TE #4 | CSE #5 | |
| Winter | 4B | ME 526 | ME 535 | ME 538 | TE #8/ ME 547** |
TE #9 | CSE #5 |
* a welding/joining related project is recommended
** recommended
Figure 2: Mechanical Engineering students doing the hands-on welding labs at Conestoga College as part of ME436 - Welding and Joining Processes (S/02).
Students in 8-stream (4A, Spring term) will have a cooperative work term after completing ME 436. Work terms with welding/joining-related experience are encouraged even before entering the Welding & Joining Specialization.
The required courses have been modelled after the IIW Welding Engineer curriculum requirements. They also satisfying a part of the requirements for a "Welding Engineer" as specified by the Canadian Standard Association (CSA) standards W47.1 and W47.2 - Certification of Companies for Fusion Welding of Steel and Aluminum Structures, respectively. Students choosing the Welding & Joining Specialization will be of great value in other types of manufacturing companies that do not normally require CSA certification but do require welding engineering expertise, such as manufacturers of transportation equipment and vehicles, microelectronic and consumer products (e.g., appliances, food packaging), petrochemical, pulp and paper, etc. The Mechanical Engineering core courses and the Welding & Joining Specialization courses together provide approximately 400 hours of instruction and over 30 hours of practical hands-on experience.
Figure 3: The 13 Welding and Joining Specialization Certificate holders from the Mechanical Engineering class of 2007.
To register for the Welding & Joining Specialization, fill out the Registration Form and return it to Lynn Crema, Academic Advisor, Department of Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering (E2-2318A) on or before the last day for course drop and add in your 4A term. Please not that enrolment in ME 436 is capped at 28 students and that first priority will be given to those registered in the Welding & Joining Specialization. Therefore, you may wish to register before your 1st QUEST appointment time for selecting yoru 4A technical elective courses. Also, you will not be considered for the three scholarships descriped below unless you are registered in the Specialization.
The Welding and Joining Specialization at Waterloo has been strongly supported by a number of Canadian companies. Initial funding for the Welding and Joining Specialization was from donations by the following founding corporate partners and organizations:
Alcan International Ltd., |
Magna International Inc., |
More recently, funding has also been received from:
Budd Canada Inc., TRW Canada Ltd., Tregaskiss Ltd., Huys Industries Ltd.
These and other companies continue to support the Welding and Joining Specialization in many ways including loaning welding equipment, donations of materials and welding specimens, hosting of plant tours and providing guest lectures on industry specific topics. As indicated below, some companies and organizations provide scholarships for students enrolled in the Specialization. Finally, many of these companies and others support the Specialization by hiring co-op work-term students and full time graduates from the Specialization.
The first graduates of the Welding & Joining Specialization convocated in May 1999. Since then, more than 67 students have followed. Most now have welding & joining-related jobs, or remain to do postgraduate degrees on welding and joining research.
The Canadian welding industry has provided three scholarships in support of the Welding & Joining Specialization:
Welding and Joining is interdisciplinary. Therefore, the faculty who are involved are from several different groups or disciplines within the Department of Mechanical Engineering. They are listed below in alphabetical order, along with courses of the Specialization which they may teach.
| Gregory Glinka (ME 526) |
Tam Nguyen (Conestoga College) (ME 436, ME 538) |
Welding and joining research is also very important at the University of Waterloo. Although the Welding and Joining Specialization is new (starting in September 1998), welding and joining research has been carried out at Waterloo since the 1960's. Many Waterloo graduates with MASc or PhD degrees have been very successful in Canadian industrial positions where a strong welding background has been very important. Current welding and joining - related research at Waterloo includes: design and fracture of welded components and products; development, modelling and optimization of welding and joining processes such as welding, resistance welding and laser welding; the influences of welding and joining processes on the microstructure and properties of joined materials; sensing and control of joining processes - often integrating this with robotics applications. This interdisciplinary work on welding and joining involves faculty in the Automation and Control, Materials Engineering & Processing, and Machine Design and Solid Mechanics Groups of professors in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. For further information, see also the descriptions under Research Activities on the Departmental web site.
Since the start of the Welding and Joining Specialization in September 1998, some of the news highlights are:
A new faculty member, Dr. Norman Zhou, began in October 1998. He was recruited from the Edison Welding Institute, Columbus Ohio. Prior to that he had worked at AECL, in Chalk River ON, after completing a PhD at the University of Toronto on "transient liquid phase brazing" - an important joining process for nickel-based alloys and other materials. His research at Waterloo includes resistance spot welding (e.g., for automotive applications, including aluminum) and microjoining of plated materials for the electronics and other industries. In 2003, Norman Zhou was awarded Canadian Research Council (CRC) Chair in Microjoining. In association with this Chair, another new faculty member, Michael Mayer, began in May 2004. Dr. Mayer was recruited from ESEC SA, Switzerland. He earned his PhD at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, working on integrated sensors for microelectronics bonding process research. His research will be focused in the area of microjoining, especially assembly and packaging methods for microelectronics and MEMS devices.
Three new welding-related courses have been developed for the Welding and Joining Specialization;
More information on the Welding & Joining Specialization contact:
Professor Dave Weckman,
Coordinator of the Welding & Joining Specialization
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1
dweckman@uwaterloo.ca
(519)888-4567, ext. 32861, Office: E2-2309
or
Professor Michael Mayer,
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Waterloo
mmayer@mecheng1.uwaterloo.ca
(519)888-4567, ext. 84024, Office: E2-2306
or
Professor Norman Zhou,
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Waterloo
nzhou@mecheng1.uwaterloo.ca
(519)888-4567, ext. 36095, Office: E2-2320
University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
519 888 4567
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