ARC Specialties, Inc., Houston, Texas, a manufacturer of automated and robotic welding systems, has hired Hoang Nguyen as Assistant Project Manager.  Nguyen graduated from San Jose State University with a BSME (Mechatronics) and has interned with Hitachi GST, Applied Materials, and Neptec Optical Solutions.

Every year ARC Specialties mentors high school robotics teams, and lends resources like ARC's manufacturing facility and machinery to help robotics teams fabricate their robot. 

Welding Technician Jim Walker successfully achieved ACCP Level II certification for Visual and Optical Testing (VT), and Liquid Penetrant Testing (PT) from the American Society of Nondestructive Testing earlier this month. 

The certifications will benefit Walker’s work as a Certified Welding Inspector for ARC Specialties’ Engineering & Consulting Services division. 

Baytown, TX – ARC Specialties Top Alcohol Funny Car driver Steve Burck made his first finals appearance at the O’Reilly Auto Parts NHRA Spring Nationals with a runner-up finish.  Burck posted some of his quickest passes in recent racing series, with a semi-final pass clocking in with an impressive ET of 5.681 sec and speed of 252.33 mph.

Local girl scouts visited ARC Specialties last week to tour the facility and earn their engineering badge.  The girl scouts took turns controlling robotic arms in ARC's R&D lab and met with Duchesne Academy's all-girl high school robotic team which ARC Specialties sponsors each year.  ARC Specialties is dedicated to encouraging youth to pursue careers in science and engineering.

ARC Specialties, a company that designs and builds automated welding systems worldwide, has formed an alliance with the E.O. Paton Electric Welding Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (PEWI).

PEWI, renowned as one of the most prestigious welding institutions in the world, has developed many of the welding manufacturing industry’s latest technologies.

DASH Diary Entry: January 10th.

The season has started and with it comes the madness. Daily meetings, constant email messages, and a never ending amount of work has been added to the usual stresses of school. However, this year seems to be going surprisingly well; I say this with limited enthusiasm for the season is only 3 days in and there are about 39 days left. Not a single part has been assembled or created yet, but plans are in the works. I can proudly say that team 3103, a group of girls in plaid skirts, is building at tank-like robot this year. We are excited to get to ARC Specialties to work but I think we are anticipating the trip to San Antonio just as much.

At the meeting today hotel arrangements were discussed, but the chatter got much louder as discussion about design began. The base team is working hard to find thread for the tank drive and the arm team has been working on a forklift type arm and gripper utilizing both pneumatics and chains. Programming is anticipating what they need to do to make the robot that is still nonexistent to work.

Despite the fact that competition is so far away, Iron Plaid scored a small success today. For the first time in the history of our FIRST robotics team, we nominated a well deserving mentor for the Woodie Flowers Award. This award recognizes dedication and service to the program and all our mentors deserve it, but unfortunately we could only nominate one.

5 weeks and 4 days left to build!