A day in the life of a welder.

From concept to completion, different departments have to pull together to make things happen. From the moment that the product gets ordered, to making it in our Welwyn Garden City factory, to fitting it out on site, we work hard to ensure that everything you need is on time and of the best quality. Let’s be honest, when it comes to HVAC it’s not so much about the glitz and the glam, but about the functionality and performance.

I recently spent a day shadowing one of our senior welders, and today I’m going to give you a little insight into the working life of a welder for Sirius Products and Chapman Ventilation at our UK head office. Here’s how it happened:

Marketing Comms. Co-Ordinator Chandni is going undercover in the factory and learning what it takes to be a welder with us. Pretty sure the answer is lots of tea.

08:52 After a quick check of the schedule and a cup of tea, it's time to help a new member of the team with his work program for the day and check his work from yesterday. I'm following Jez today, one of our more senior welders. He's just put Nicole Scherzinger on ... this could be a long day

09:15 New guy's doing really well. Time to start our work for the day, and first on the list is building electrodes. Surprisingly fiddly. Those aren't my hands, by the way...

10:00 Tea break. Naturally.

10:20 Back to working on the electrodes. Takes patience and a lot of practice to get these done quickly. I have neither.

11:00 Woo! Electrodes done. Am now a pro. Now to weld a dishwasher canopy. 11:05 So the guys from the press brake have just dropped off the moulded parts for the canopy. These parts have all been made from a sheet of stainless - cut by the laser then bent into shape by the press brakes. It's Jez's (my) job to weld these parts together.

11:15 Using a ruler and a copper cutting tool (copper's softer than stainless so won't damage the canopy) we carefully cut the edge wrapping off the parts and peel back the sticky label.

12:05 So now it's time to actually do some welding - we're about to TIG weld the first two pieces together. I say we. I mean the qualified welder is about to while I watch. The pieces are clamped together first.

12:15 And we have welding! Once all the sides are welded together, Jez will then weld the top of the canopy onto the sides.

13:00 Annd lunch. More tea. Sky sports.

13:30 Back to it. Rocking protective glasses for the next bit. You're not having a photo of that.

13:35 So now we've got to smooth down the welding we've just done so that it matches the brushed effect on the stainless steel. There's five stages to this: first, grind it down with a 4.5 inch 120 grit pad; second, the same but with a 2 inch 120 ...more grinder pad; third, more of the same, but an air grinder this time; fourth, it's onto the graining wheel; and fifth a buff with the scotch brite pad.

14:15 Now to get the colouring off from the welding. This is done using acetone and a special cleaning tool connected to an earth pack.

14:45 Nearly there! Just got to seal inside the canopy.

15:00 Just a wipe down, and that's that. Dishwash canopy welded, and on to the next one.