The Welding and Joining Specialization Program

The Welding & Joining Specialization is normally completed as part of the Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate program at the University of Waterloo. Thus, the core program of Mechanical Engineering is the core for the Welding & Joining Specialization.

Required and recommended courses for the Welding & Joining Specialization are listed in Table 1. Mechanical Engineering students who complete all of the required courses will receive a special Certificate of Completion of the Welding & Joining Specialization, in addition to their Bachelor of Applied Science Diploma in Mechanical Engineering.

There are five 4th year technical electives (TE) required for the Welding & Joining Specialization. These courses include the normal lecture hours plus (in total) about 60 hours of hands-on laboratory work. Students must take the following courses in their 4A Mechanical Engineering term:

• ME 436 - Welding and Joining Processes 
• ME 435 – Industrial Metallurgy

In their 4B term, students must take:

• ME 526 – Fatigue and Fracture Analysis
• ME 535 - Welding Metallurgy
• ME 538 - Welding Design, Fabrication and Quality Control

Much of the hands-on laboratory work for ME 436 and ME 538 is carried out at the Cambridge campus of Conestoga College (about 30 minutes drive). Laboratories associated with the other courses are at the University of Waterloo.

Table 1: The Welding and Joining Specialization Courses.

A welding or joining related project can be undertaken in the 4th term core course ME 481 - Mechanical Engineering Design Project. This is recommended, but not required. In addition, many manufacturers are moving to more automated welding procedures. Thus, students enrolled in the Welding & Joining Specialization are also encouraged to take the technical elective course in robotics, i.e., ME 547 – Robotic Manipulators: Kinematics, Dynamics, Control.

The Welding and Joining Specialization courses and all other courses required in fourth year Mechanical Engineering curriculum are shown in Table 2. ME 481 is a required technical elective course. In addition to taking ME 435 and ME 436 in 4A, students are free to take one technical elective in another area of interest. In 4B, students must take ME 526, ME 535 and ME 538, but are free to take two other technical electives of their own choice. Note that all courses required for the Welding & Joining Specialization fit into the normal CSE and TE courses required for the Mechanical Engineering program. Extra courses are not required for the Welding & Joining Specialization.

Table 2: The Welding and Joining Specialization courses in the 4A and 4B Mechanical Engineering curriculum.

Figure 2: Mechanical Engineering students doing the hands-on welding labs at Conestoga College as part of ME538 - Welding Design, Fabrication and Quality Control course (W/12).

Students in 8-stream (4A, Spring term) will have a cooperative work term after completing ME 436. Work terms with welding/joining-related experience are encouraged even before entering the Welding & Joining Specialization.

The required courses have been modelled after the IIW Welding Engineer curriculum requirements. They also satisfying a part of the requirements for a "Welding Engineer" as specified by the Canadian Standard Association (CSA) standards W47.1 and W47.2 - Certification of Companies for Fusion Welding of Steel and Aluminum Structures, respectively. Students choosing the Welding & Joining Specialization will be of great value in other types of manufacturing companies that do not normally require CSA certification but do require welding engineering expertise, such as manufacturers of transportation equipment and vehicles, microelectronic and consumer products (e.g., appliances, food packaging), petrochemical, pulp and paper, etc. The Mechanical Engineering core courses and the Welding & Joining Specialization courses together provide approximately 400 hours of instruction and over 30 hours of practical hands-on experience.

Figure 3: The 13 Welding and Joining Specialization Certificate holders from the Mechanical Engineering class of 2007.