The Welding Institute
The Welding Institute or TWI Ltd is a large research and technology institute that focuses on welding and joining technology. The Welding Institute has been based in Great Abington, near Cambridge , England, since 1946 and has several offices around the world. The Welding Institute is a member of the International Institute of Welding .
history
The Welding Institute is a direct descendant of The Institution of Welding Engineers , which came into being in traditional British style when 20 men were gathered in the Holborn Restaurant in London on January 26, 1922 and decided to form an association to help acetylene welders and bring together arc welders. The date of formal registration was February 15, 1923. Slow growth over the next 10 years saw membership grow to 600 with an income of £ 800 a year.
In April 1934 a new organization, The Institute of Welding , was formed to merge the institute with the British Advisory Welding Council . A symposium that same year on iron and steel welding was held in conjunction with the Iron and Steel Institute and demonstrated the need for a research program well beyond the capabilities of the frugally funded institute. With the impending war, the commitment of employees of the Welding Research Council and with the help of modest funds from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) , this program was started in 1937. Initially, the institute did not have its own laboratories, but mainly supported work in British universities.
In the late 1940s, a first step was taken to transform the status of the Welding Research Council into a Research Association , giving it access to DSIR funding on a 1: 1 ratio to payments received from the industry. At that time, professional institutions with personal members, i. H. with individuals instead of companies, with the exception of operating as research associations, so that the establishment of the British Welding Research Association (BWRA) in 1946 forced the separation from the previous institute.
BWRA bought Abington Hall, near Cambridge, UK, for £ 3850 , a plot of land with several partially derelict buildings, and began operations under Allan Ramsay Moon as Director of Research. The first welding workshop was set up in an old stable next to Abington Hall and fatigue strength research began under Richard Weck .
BWRA also owned a very nice house in London near Exhibition Road (29 Park Crescent) in which it set up a metallurgical laboratory, with the former Butler's Pantry as a polishing room and the former quarters of the coachman as a workshop.
Ramsay Moon left the company after a year because he was disaffected with receiving only £ 30,000 from the DSIR. It then fell on Harry Taylor to turn the organization into a profitable business. By the 1950s, the organization had enough healthy finances to finally begin building purpose-built laboratories on the Abington Hall site.
The Institute of Welding had bought a property in London near the Imperial College of Science and Technology . It offered an expanding training program through its School of Welding Technology and later the School of Non-Destructive Testing.
In 1957 Richard Weck became director of the BWRA and made sure that the organization continued its innovative research and development projects in welding technology, metallurgy and mechanical engineering. In the 1960s, the BWRA grew significantly in size and scope, especially in the area of training. Usually these activities were complemented by those of the Institute of Welding , but it became clear that the merger of the two organizations would better serve the industry. The successor DSIR, the Ministry of Technology, raised no objections, so a merger was agreed and a new company - The Welding Institute - was founded on March 28, 1968. The combined income of the merged company resulted in over £ 1m in first year sales.
Direct financial support from government departments ceased in the 1970s, but The Welding Institute not only survived this financial crisis but grew rapidly. The number of personal members of the association, which was founded in 1922, grew to more than 7,000 engineers and technicians during this time. Both personal members and industrial companies are represented on a board of directors that direct and oversee the operational and financial activities of The Welding Institute and its directors.
The friction stir welding process was invented and patented by Wayne Thomas at The Welding Institute in 1991 and helped the institute to achieve an internationally recognized leadership position outside of the oil and gas industry, which has been the focus of research projects so far.
In 2008 The Welding Institute had branches with laboratories and offices in three other locations in the UK ( Middlesbrough , Port Talbot and Rotherham ) and other facilities in the US, China, Southeast Asia, South America and the Middle East.