Vandenberg shop awarded a patent for welding cart Published Aug. 21, 2007 By Airman 1st Class Wesley Carter 30th Space Wing Public Affairs VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- A new welding cart patented by Vandenberg's Training Device Design and Engineering Center is designed to increase the safety and well being of Airmen. The Gas Guardian welding cart is designed to make welding safer and easier said Dell Barritt the TDDEC director and co-designer of the cart. The cart incorporates many common safety features of a normal welding cart into one. The cart was made using simple operational risk management. The carts conception was the result of not finding a safe cart with necessary features, Mr. Barritt said. "I could find carts with a wall to protect the gas tanks, but no reel for the hose or vice versa," he said. "No cart had all of the components of our cart." The Vandenberg Safety Office saw the cart and recommended that the cart be pushed up the Air Force Safety Office, and from there it was pushed even further and made into a U.S. patent, Mr. Barritt said. The Air Force then sold the rights of the patent to a commercial welding company that will sell the design for profit. Other DOD industrial shops will gain the cart since the Air Force will be pushing the product to all MAJCOMS and other branches of service to be used in their industrial shops, Mr. Barritt said. "Most industrial shops have a welding cart that is less than safe, we decided to change that," Mr. Barritt said. Existing carts will be replaced with one that applies common sense and simplicity. "The fabrication of the cart was pretty simple," said Eugene Dewegeli a TDDEC machinist and co-designer of the cart. "The hardest part was putting it into our schedule, so we could work on it." This cart is just one more ORM breakthrough in a shop that has had no major accidents since it opened at Vandenberg in 1958. The cart will allow TDDEC and other Air Force industrial shops stay on the cutting edge of technology and design, while keeping safety a top priority, as they have for the past 60 years.