Xiris has extended its salesforce into the world’s largest and fastest growing market – China.
After signing Harbin Jinlifeng Science and Technology Development Co. Ltd (Jinlifeng) to be the exclusive Chinese distributor of Xiris Products for the welding industry, Cameron Serles, President of Xiris, decided to visit our new Chinese partner in January 2014 along with Dean Zhao, Project Manager for the weld camera product line.
We arrived at Harbin, China, in early January to -25°C temperatures! Dr. Sanbao Lin, the Vice Director of the State Key Laboratories for Advanced Welding and Joining (State Key Lab), met us at the airport. Dr. Lin is well known in the Chinese welding community as a welding pioneer and consultant to many companies in different industries across China such as aerospace, nuclear, ship building, automotive, tube mills etc. His research team is specialized in arc welding techniques and welding process monitoring and control.
Our trip began by visiting the State Key Lab of welding. This lab is part of Harbin Institute of Technology which is one of the top ranked universities in China. The lab was the first welding lab established in China, equipped with all kinds of welding related equipment available from all over the world. Now, the lab will be equipped with one more piece of welding equipment – the Xiris XVC-O Weld Camera System. We installed and tested our XVC-O Weld Cameras on a number of welding setups: MIG, tandem MIG, TIG, Plasma on aluminum and MIG on aluminum. We demonstrated the system to various graduate students and trained them how the system works. They were able to see features previously not possible: the wire feeds in a tandem MIG welding process, the keyhole in plasma welding, weld puddles and weld pools in both MIG and TIG welding.
L to R: Cameron Serles – President, Xiris Automation Inc / Dr.Lin - Vice Director of the State Key Laboratories for Advanced Welding and Joining of Harbin China / Dean Zhao – Project Manager, Xiris Automaton Inc.
The following day, we visited Harbin Welding Institute (HWI), the largest welding research & development institute in China. HWI has two major subsidiaries: welding material development and welding automation equipment division, one of the largest welding automation companies in China. Headquarters of the China Welding Association, Chinese Welding Society, and Chinese Committee for Welding Standardization are all located in HWI. We met the general manager of HWI’s welding automation group, Mr. Zhang and the sales manager of both groups, Mr. Wu. We introduced Xiris and Xiris weld products to HWI. HWI also gave us an introduction of the institute and took us to their automation shop. They showed us various welding automation projects, including small diameter pipe cladding, underwater laser cutting for the nuclear industry, and multi-torch welding systems. Roughly they had about 30 projects on their floor to be shipped to their customers in the next few months.
Later in the day, we met the general manager of Jinlifeng, Ms. Li. Jinlifeng is specialized in reselling industrial computers and related equipment and will be our distributor for China.
Summary of our findings in our Harbin Trip:
- Harbin is the centre for welding in China, with famous institutions like State Key Lab and HWI there.
- China’s welding market is enormous with the huge amount of infrastructure being built.
- There is a lot of semi-automated welding equipment be used in China. Some of these systems are now being slowly transformed into fully automated welding processes.
- There is some good technology being developed and used in China for welding!
