Also, at the most common shade, Shade 10, once the helmet is on, the wearer is in complete darkness until they start the weld. That’s why you see welders set their tools and prepare for their welds before giving their heads a hard shake to snap the shades down on passive helmets, Fahey says.
While welders often still keep a passive helmet as a backup, most of today’s welders have transitioned to auto-darkening helmets, which have really taken off in just the last decade.
“With the auto-darkening helmets, the filter is already darkening automatically from your light state to your dark state,” he explains. “If I have to go do a weld and I already have my auto-darkening helmet on, I can clearly see what I’m doing beforehand, and I can quickly do my weld without having to take these extra steps” before each weld and when changing between projects.
For the welders, these helmets have a few advantages:
- They no longer have to stop and switch shades between jobs.
- They can also change the shade of the auto-darkening filters (ADFs) on the fly with manual or digital controls on the helmets.
- They have clear visibility when they’re not welding.
- They have less neck strain because they’re no longer flipping their heads to close the shades.
From the perspective of the business, Fahey says, there is a return on investment as well—despite the difference in cost between passive and auto-darkening helmets.
“What took you maybe an hour to do can take you a handful of minutes because you’re doing less motion to get to the weld,” he says.
Companies see that as a benefit. “Even though you might go out and see an auto-darkening helmet for $200 and a passive helmet for $45, you can justify the added cost pretty quickly based on the amount of time it saves,” Fahey says. “You can have less welders on a job, or you could have more welders taking on more work.”
This can be a critical factor given the skills gap for welders. The typical welder today is on average 50 years old, he says. “And for every two welders that leave the industry, only one is entering.”
A Wide Range of Welding Helmets for a Wide Range of Uses and Users
When selecting a helmet, you always start with what you are doing, what kind of products you are producing, and long term, how you think you will be using the helmet, Fahey explains.
“When picking a helmet, there’s personal preference, just like choosing a pair of shoes too,” he says.
There are decent helmets at the lower end for those companies that only do occasional welds but then on the opposite end of the spectrum, there are high-end products for companies with workers who weld all day long every day.
Helmets use an optical clarity scale across four categories—vision accuracy, diffusion of light, lens light and dark areas, and visual angle clarity—rated at a 1, 2 or 3. The best ranking would be a 1/1/1/1.
“If you’re shopping for welding helmets and you see that 1/1/1/1, you know you have the highest-rated helmet in the marketplace,” Fahey says. “At SureWerx, compared to our competitors, we have the most helmets that hit that top-tier, 1/1/1/1 quality.”
The company also has the widest range of auto-darkening filter and auto-darkening helmet combinations, he says.
The focus for SureWerx—now home to Jackson, Wilson and Sellstrom products and nearly 100 years of experience in welding protective gear—is to create new helmets and add features that make users more comfortable, more productive and also safe, Fahey says.
Here’s a look at a few of the company’s auto-darkening helmets:
Jackson BH3
The BH3 helmet was one of the first welding helmets on the market to achieve top optical clarity because of its use of Balder Technology, which uses super-twisted pneumatics so that the auto-darkening filters can switch shades quickly and clearly.