Written by: Wesley Doneth
September, 2025- Production welders are a valuable asset, and fabricators are always on the hunt for solutions that will improve their efficiency, productivity and ergonomics. In the manual arc welding production environment, tools that can provide the welder with better control, less fatigue and optimized parameter controls have been limited over the years, with only moderate improvements.
Potentiometers for wire feed speed control, or portable control knobs that supply an analog change to the wire feed speed or other parameters, have been used with moderate success in the production GMAW environment for decades. While these solutions allow for adjustment of the settings, the welder is left to guess what the exact settings are and make the assessment based on if it is hot enough.
In the production environment, where the settings are only at the welding machine or wire feeder, the solution typically is to find a sweet spot and weld everything with the same settings, varying the travel speed for the application. Other solutions have been triggers with a two-stage selection―a half pull is the lower schedule and a full pull is the higher schedule. The analog solutions offered some advantages, but often they were overshadowed by decreased ergonomics and concessions made on knowing the exact parameters in use on a particular weldment. Fronius has been working to improve manual welders’ comfort, efficiency and productivity with a digital approach to onboard torch controls.
THE DIGITAL WELDING TORCH
As technology has improved, the ability to put digital controls directly on the welding torch is now possible. Factors like heat, toughness and general reliability (while considering costs) have made great improvements in recent years. Advancements in the electronics industry have allowed the torches to remain small and compact but offer true onboard controls for the welding parameters.
For welders, this can offer advantages for safety and ergonomics, as well, such as less walking to the machine for fine tuning or selecting different settings. Imagine being able to have one schedule specifically for tacking up your parts and then choosing an entirely different schedule that has trigger lock for long welds on the same part, never having to go to the machine to select a different schedule or to make adjustments.
The quality engineer or CWI can now implement more specific parameters for their production needs instead of finding a general setting for everything, where the welder has to change travel speed, torch angle or other factors to compensate for the general setting.
Customers have reported productivity gains with onboard parameter control up to 400 percent. A custom fire truck manufacturer in Michigan was able to reduce its manufacturing time by 12 hours on the aluminum truck walls because the welders could choose different parameters for the joints and thicknesses, which resulted in less time making adjustments and less compromise on settings for a reduction in spatter and rework.
THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE
Advances made in the last two decades to bring onboard parameter adjustments to welders’ fingertips have greatly increased comfort, productivity, safety and ergonomics. Here at Fronius, we envision a day where more intelligence in the equipment, along with heads-up feedback to the welder, will maximize manual welding in all aspects from quality to productivity while enhancing comfort and ergonomics. Recent advances allow the welder to choose which parameters they want control of on the torch and removes the ones that are unnecessary. Allowing customization of what parameters to control reduces complexing and scrolling time to find what you need for your weld adjustment.
Wesley Doneth is regional strategic product manager at Fronius USA LLC. He has worked in the welding industry for almost 25 years and has been in the fi eld with manufacturers helping them solve challenges. He is a longtime AWS member and serves as District 11 director.
