You've got more welding work than welders. Every job you turn down is revenue lost. Standard Bots offers a pre-engineered MIG welding system made with welders in mind. Set it up fast. Teach it without writing a line of code. Your welders spend their time on the hard parts, and the robot handles the repeat work. Come teach a robot at @FabtechExpo, October 21-23 📍Booth S4400

Robot arms welding car frames. Pallet movers on warehouse rails. AMRs on delivery routes. Most enterprise robotics value already sits in that installed base, according to John Healy of @intel, in conversation with @ryanshrout and @DaveN007 at the Six Five Summit. $INTC

My friend Kuroki has taught welding for 26 years, at a technical high school in Japan. Last spring, he watched six hundred people in Mississippi stand up and scream for a welder. He still can't tell the story without stopping halfway. Here's why. In Japan, your life gets sorted at fifteen. One entrance exam. The top kids go to academic high schools. The kids who don't make it go to schools like Kuroki's. Nobody says it out loud. Everybody knows. Every spring, high schools hang banners: how many seniors got into which university. Kuroki's seniors go to shipyards and factories. Nobody hangs a banner for that. For 26 years, he has watched his students cross the graduation stage in silence. Head down. A small bow. Like they were apologizing for where they were going. Last spring, his school sent him to a high school on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. A town that builds ships. His job was to study their welding program. Three days in, the welding teacher, a big man named Boone, said, "You picked a good week. Thursday's Signing Day." Kuroki had seen Signing Day on TV. A star quarterback. A table. Three college hats. That is not what he saw. The gym was packed. The band was there. The cheerleaders were there. At the front was a long table with a red tablecloth. No college hats. Welding helmets. Hard hats. A pipe wrench. An electrician's tool belt. Behind every chair stood a man in work boots and a necktie he clearly did not enjoy. The shipyard. The electric company. A plumbing outfit. An air conditioning company. The principal took the microphone and read the first name like an NFL draft pick. "TYLER KREBS. Pipe welder. Signing with the shipyard." Air horns. Cowbells. Tyler's grandmother held up a poster board: MY GRANDBABY BUILDS SHIPS. The football coach was in the front row, screaming louder than anyone. For a welder. Next was a girl, maybe five-foot-one. Kinsley Ladner. Electrician. The old electricians in the bleachers were on their feet before the principal finished her name. Kuroki leaned over to Boone. "These are your top students?" Boone didn't answer right away. "Buddy, these are the kids who keep the lights on. Who else are we gonna stand up for?" Then came a boy named Jace. Everybody in that gym knew two things about Jace. He was the best welder in the county. And he couldn't read very well. He'd been held back in third grade. Kids had called him things ever since. He sat down. He picked up the letter. He stared at it. Six hundred people went quiet. Boone walked over, crouched down beside him, and read it into his ear. Quietly. Line by line. The whole gym waited. Nobody looked at a phone. Nobody coughed. Jace nodded. Picked up the pen. Signed his name. Kuroki says he has never heard a sound like the one that gym made. He felt it in the bench. Jace's father, a shipfitter for thirty years, came down out of the bleachers in his work shirt, pulled off his own welding cap, and put it on his son's head. Afterward, Kuroki shook Jace's hand and asked him how it felt. "Sir," Jace said, "that's the first time anybody ever clapped for me in a school." Kuroki excused himself and went outside to stand by his rental car for a while. In Japan, high school seniors who are going to work get their job offers in the fall. Last month, Kuroki's seniors got theirs. So he held his school's first Signing Day. In a classroom. With a red tablecloth from the 100-yen shop and three welding helmets. The principal agreed to read the names. Kuroki asked him to read them like a draft pick. The principal practiced in his office. Everyone could hear him through the wall. The parents came in work clothes. They didn't know the rules. They bowed. They clapped politely. Like at a funeral. Then the principal read the name of a boy going to the same shipyard where his father has welded for 31 years. The father stood up. He is not a loud man. He had skipped every school event for three years. Work. He shouted his son's name. Once. Full volume. For one second, nobody moved. Then the whole room was on its feet. His son looked at the floor. Then at his father. Then he did something Kuroki had not seen a student do on graduation day in 26 years. He lifted his head. Afterward, the boy came up to Kuroki and said, in Japanese, almost exactly what Jace had said. "Sensei, nobody has ever clapped for me at school." Kuroki excused himself and went outside to stand by his car for a while. Again. He had also ordered twelve air horns from America. The vice principal confiscated eleven. Nobody knows how the twelfth one got into a grandmother's purse.

The bottleneck isn’t funding. It’s throughput. When welding capacity is the constraint, ship dates move, and everything slips. Feb 11 • 1 PM ET 30-min webinar w/ @PathRobotics CRO Heather Carroll: How Physical AI Will Rebuild American Manufacturing Register →

Persona AI wants to make #humanoid# robots that can perform specific skilled labor. They chose welding. The long, linear welds that Persona will focus on are used repeatedly in shipbuilding.

At Foton’s Weifang plant, robots are now handling welding and assembly, while digital systems support daily production management. The upgrade offers a glimpse into the rise of smart manufacturing across the city’s industrial parks.

I had a wonderful time in Arkansas this week, touring National Park College’s Welding Center and Marine Repair Technology Center! From welding to marine technology, Arkansas is equipping students with in-demand skills our nation needs.