ESAB announces semi-finalists of WeldItForward contest

The three secondary school semi-finalists are Kutztown Area High School, Kutztown, Penn., Maple Mountain High School, Spanish Fork, Utah and Carroll County Career and Technology Center, Westminster, Md. The three post-secondary semi-finalists are Pickens Technical College, Aurora, Col., San Bernardino Valley College, San Bernardino, Calif., Shawnee Community College, Equality, Ill. The six semi-finalist schools will receive a welding and cutting equipment package valued at more than $6,000. The equipment includes:

• 1 ESAB Rebel™ EMP 235ic Welding Systems
• 1 ESAB Rebel™ EM 215
• 1 Thermal Dynamics Cutmaster 60i Manual Plasma System
• 1 Victor Journeyman EDGE™ 2.0 Outfit
• 2 Sentinel A50 helmets
• 6 pair MIG gloves and 6 pair TIG gloves
• ESAB filler metals, including OK AristoRod 12.50 solid MIG wire, Sureweld and Atom Arc Acclaim 7018 Stick electrodes and Dual Shield™ and Coreshield Flux-Cored wires.

Using this equipment, teams of two to five students will create a fabricated metal project, with final submissions due March 9, 2018. Two winning schools, one secondary and one post-secondary, will receive a grand prize of $20,000 in ESAB equipment and filler metals. Every student involved on the winning team will receive an ESAB Sentinel A50 auto-darkening welding helmet ($314 retail value) and a $250 cash award.

“ESAB would like to thank the hundreds of students who submitted essays, and we congratulate the six semi-finalists,” says Sue Bartholomew, Director Global MARCOM & Marketing Operations. “The essays demonstrated how students involved with welding and cutting use their skills to ‘WeldItForward’ by supporting their fellow students, schools and communities.”

Beginning next year, ESAB will post in-progress pictures from the semi-finalists, as well as post an extensive photo gallery of their final projects on the WeldItForward contest page. The projects will be evaluated based on a combination of online public voting (75 percent) and a panel of judges (25 percent).